


Hidden Maps

by MrsMess



Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, F/M, Family, Fate & Destiny, Kissing, Love at First Sight, POV Alternating, Serendipity AU, Sex, i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:08:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 53,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24551341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrsMess/pseuds/MrsMess
Summary: “[His mother] used to threaten to send him away. Now he thinks it was more of a standing offer. He should have taken her up on it while he had the chance.”He hasn’t gone to live with his uncle, instead he works at a café in New York, and one day a girl with a backpack full of books runs into it to take shelter from the rain.
Relationships: Rory Gilmore/Jess Mariano
Comments: 125
Kudos: 592





	1. One of These Things First

**Author's Note:**

> A most unlikely story, originally a totally unwarranted Coffee Shop au titled Repetitive and Redundant, that laid in wait for years before merging with the idea of a Serendipity spin on literati, and transforming into something else, something pretty good.  
> This is partly Fayevalcntine's fault <3 Thank you.  
> Mature rating just to be safe.  
> Will update once a week.

**First Things First**

_September_

By the time Jess Mariano forces himself to enter the apartment building he’s been standing outside, staring it down for almost an hour. It hasn’t budged, and he imagines he hasn’t either, he’s just going in to get something. An extra jacket would be useful. It’s unseasonably cold. Or maybe it isn’t, maybe he’s just feeling it at the prospect of actually sleeping outdoors. 

Outside the door to the apartment he stops again. Prepares, plans his movements to be as efficient as possible. In and out. He takes a breath. In and out. He fishes out his keys and opens the door in a jagged motion that stems from him not being able to make up his mind about if he should be quiet or loud. As a result the door strikes the hall stand and any chance of being sneaky about it is out the window. He freezes and loses valuable seconds. 

He is about to enter his room, first door on the left, when his mother appears in the doorway to the living room. Her face. Her eyes are shiny, its edges red, her skin pale, almost see-through, spots and freckles seemingly freely wandering its surface. And her expression... Her usual range is distant mirth to apathy to rage, but now it’s like she’s actually there. And it hurts to see her. He bites down around the pain, glares at her.

“You’re back.” Her voice is nothing more than a hoarse whisper.

I just gotta get something. The words are on his tongue, but he can’t speak for some reason. She stares at him and he can’t return the look for long. He makes another attempt to enter his room. He’s taller than his mother by now but her moving still feels like an earthquake. He hasn’t been within her reach for anything other than screaming matches for a long time and is completely caught off guard by her arms around him, and what happens in him at her touch, what he imagines it feels like inside a baling press, a kind of implosion. He makes an embarrassing sound and is grateful that her already crying drowns it out. He sees himself in the hallway mirror but can’t stand it, he hugs her back to hide his face, and disguises it as generosity.

At the same time, a good two hundred miles from there, at The Cheshire Cat Inn, just outside of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Rory Gilmore lies awake.

She’s next to her mother who has finally fallen asleep, still without talking to her though. She stares at the flowers on the wall paper, artificial, frozen, and legion. She was pulled from her bed, about a hundred miles away, put in their Jeep, denied a map, her mother going on about an adventure, despite it obviously being an escape. In a way she’s grateful to be gone, she has no idea how she’s going to be able to face her would-be-won’t-be step father again. Her mother wishes she could love him, that’s all she could muster in terms of an explanation. And that’s the crux, really. She’d stand by her mother through anything, no matter who she had to give up, but it’s hard when you’re not given rhyme or reasons. 

The two of them have been on their own for so long, there’s no one that could fit between them or perhaps even with them. They’re bound to each other and she’s as lost as her mother has to be. This is an escape, they’re running, but she doesn’t know why. Okay, maybe she does, better than she’d like to. She thinks about last year, about a kiss that had her running too, and about last spring, about three words she couldn’t say. She doesn’t want to think about that. 

She’s hungry, and wishes she could sleep. She wishes it wasn’t their life but hers, so that she could decide herself when to toss it off. As it is now she’s just Alice following the White Rabbit. What if the wall paper isn’t frozen, but growing, what it’s Wonderland and they’re all mad here, maybe the walls really are closing in on them, maybe she’ll wake up ensnared, completely entangled. It would be fair, after all, terrifying, but fair. It’s interesting, she thinks, swallowing the ache in her chest to feed the one in her tummy, how you can be as close to someone as she is to her mother and still feel so alone sometimes.

**But This Is How It Starts**

_May_

It’s a Friday, the slow part of the morning and it usually doesn't bother him this much. He prefers the busy hours, it's true, working hard is actually great for not getting stuck in thoughts of... well, being stuck, in every way. Normally he'll just pass the time by reading, but today he can't find the peace of mind for it. Liz has really been rubbing him the wrong way lately. He wants to blame it on her being single again, since she has more time on her hands to bug him with. Generally she's easier to handle when she’s in a relationship, but of course then there's the boyfriend to deal with, so it's always something. He usually has no problems blaming Liz for, well, everything, but this time it doesn’t fit, now it seems to be coming from him too. 

Outside the café people are passing by, some walking with umbrellas up, some running under newspapers, the ones who saw it coming and those who didn’t. Gloria, who owns the place is cool, despite being a friend of Liz’s, a bit too cheery for him, but who isn't? Besides the paycheck the books are the main draw for him. The walls are covered by wobbly bookshelves filled up with worn and torn paperbacks, all for sale or up for trade. But the usual case is people dropping off boxes and bags of books they’ve cleared out, so the space is always filled to its maximum capacity. 

The place is small, doesn’t have the best selection of anything, the interior design is kind of generic, Gloria seems to have the strange ambition of it resembling the main chains without actually being one. The upside of this is that he gets to pick his own music, the downside that he has to wear an apron and a stupid nametag. But the place never pulls in the same crowd as the big franchises or the hip, selective little places, so he rarely has to deal with anyone but regulars who show up for morning coffee or occupy their favorite tables for hours on plain tea. Bad for business, good for his mental health. Sometimes he thinks going here in the morning, opening the place, putting on the coffee, maintaining some level of civility with the customers is what keeps him sane. But it was never meant to be for this long. He's gotten too comfortable with it. 

He feels the need for some really angry music, but the table in the corner is taken by one of their more stubborn regulars; A long haired, bespectacled man in his forties who seems to have made it his mission to read every title they have on the premises without having the decency to take even one of them off their hands. Jess sighs and settles for The Jesus and Mary Chain.

More often than not these days he winds up thinking about why he didn’t leave the last time him and Liz were in a clinch. Them arguing is a regular occurrence, but not tension building and breaking on an epic scale like that time. He corrects himself: Them arguing was a regular occurence. That was about a year and a half ago, and even if they’ve snapped at each other since then, it hasn’t gotten out of hand. She’s apparently on some kind of cleanse: no red meat, no drugs, no anger. She doesn’t escalate, she’s stiffly chipper and evasive. Being left alone is usually one of his favorite things, and he doesn’t want to think about why it feels like this forced ceasefire she’s got going on is slowly, quietly driving him nuts. She used to threaten to send him away. Now he thinks it was more of a standing offer. He should have taken her up on it while he had the chance.

The door chimes and he curses silently, while putting on the blank face he uses with customers. It's a girl. She’s apparently forgotten her umbrella and stops in the doorway slipping out of her jacket, shaking it and brushing rain drops off with the sleeve of her shirt. She's wearing a uniform from a private school, but he's never seen that particular kind around here and wonders briefly about it. Then she looks up. 

He's used to pretty, but those eyes... She smiles at him, and there’s an expression on her face, some kind of wild exhilaration that seems gravely misplaced in this place, time. He feels his mouth go slack but quickly adjusts it. 

She takes a few steps up to the counter and looks at the menu behind his head. He turns his side to her, to be casual about staring at her. Her hair is wet, her lashes too, some mascara is stuck underneath her eyes, and she sniffles. He hands her a napkin automatically, and she looks at him, smiling again.

“Thanks.”

He compensates his beating heart by shrugging. She wipes her face, and gets up on her toes and spies over the counter, throwing the used napkin into the bin next to him. 

“Guess I’ll have a big cup of coffee,” she says, “first thing’s first.”

He nods and pours her one.

She slides her yellow backpack off of her shoulder and opens it to retrieve her wallet; It is full of books and must weigh a ton for it, there are six or seven, and at least three of them are fiction from what he can tell. Reading for pleasure. He can't help himself but stares, hungry, trying to make out the titles or authors. Bukowski, Austen and, ouch, Rand, but is that Howl stuffed in at the bottom?

He feels her eyes on him and pulls his mouth into an awkward smile, pointing to her backpack.

"That's a great book." 

She does a double take and then follows his gaze, before looking back to him, absently handing him the money. He hurries to get her change. 

“You take milk?”

She chuckles.

"No. And I'm guessing you mean the Bukowski."

He frowns.

"Don't jump to conclusions. I've read Austen. And Ginsberg. But I didn't want to say 'those books' 'cause then you might think I meant Rand."

She shifts her weight.

"Oh. You're one of those people."

"Sane ones?"

She gasps in faux shock, then sticks out her chin.

"A man is visionary, a woman is crazy."

"Hey, I don’t discriminate, if a male author went on like she does I'd call him crazy too, which I didn't call her by the way-"

She shakes her head and stirs her coffee jaggedly. He smirks in defense.

"But yes, I was referring to Bukowski."

She looks at him.

"Okay. Then yes." 

"Yes what?"

"Yes, it is a great book.” She tilts her head and smiles sweetly. “But to be honest aren't they all?"

He smiles involuntarily, catches himself, gets a hold of it, clears his throat.

"You read much?"

"I haven't met my match yet."

He chuckles.

"Hold on."

He reaches into the corner behind the counter that holds his belongings, pulls out the stack of books that he keeps there and puts them up on the counter. She smiles. She locks eyes with him and he has to swallow, as well as restrain the smile he gives in response. She reaches into her bag and pulls out her books placing them on the counter and pushing them the few inches to his end. She reaches for his books and pulls them up to her looking through them eagerly. An exchange, an offer. He hesitates, but starts looking through hers also. He holds up Howl.

“Did I mention this is great?”

“It really can’t be said enough.” She agrees.

He browses the pages, they’re folded here and there, but otherwise pristine, she apparently doesn’t treat her copies like he does his.

“Haven’t read it in a while.” He mumbles.

“How come?”

He blinks at the question, it’s so random, but honest. 

“My-” he starts before he has time to think about it, “-mother’s apartment is small and she has a temper, sometimes books go missing under mysterious circumstances.” Even as a joke it’s thoroughly strange to call Liz his mother, to even speak about her, he never does.

The girl tilts her head.

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well.”

He sighs, she returns her attention to his stack of books.

"There’s actually stuff here that I've yet to read." She says after a few moments.

"Well, you can borrow them." He immediately offers.

What the hell, Jess? Maybe it was a joke, but her eyes widen.

"You can't lend me these.” She objects. “They're library books."

"Those haven't seen the inside of a library since '96."’

She obviously covers up indignation, he has to smile.

"Didn't your mother teach you not to steal?" She says, tone light.

"As a matter of fact, no. She did teach me to share, though."

"You don't even know me."

"Call me crazy, taking a chance on a person in a school uniform."

She raises an eyebrow.

"Oh, you think you got me figured out, do you? If you'd met some of my classmates you might think twice about assuming a person in a plaid skirt is Bambi on two legs."

He laughs, it feels strange.

"Hey, you assumed I referred to Bukowski!"

"And I was right."

"And I'm not?"

"That's beside the point. I'm not exactly local." 

She finally takes a seat at one of the tall stools by the counter. He grabs a rag and casually follows her, pretending to spot things to clean there.

"Is that so? Where are you from?"

"The uniform's from Hartford, Connecticut."

He smiles at her deflection.

"Wow. And it's-" he glances at his watch. "Are you cutting school?"

"Told you not jump to conclusions.” She leans over the counter to give weight to her words. “I could be hell on wheels."

"And I'm sure you are." He responds, trying and failing at containing the purr in his voice.

She leans back in her seat, points at him with a wagging finger.

"And you're one to talk. You're not in school either."

And, just like that he has no problem with controlling himself again. He smiles tightly, familiarly.

"Well, I don't attend school."

She frowns and looks him up and down, apparently trying to assess his age. Her gaze is sharp, he turns his back to it and shrugs.

"I haven’t set my foot there for weeks, I think I might’ve dropped out."

He glances at her just to see her face drop, and he smiles, grimly.

"Don't feel bad. This is fine.” He turns back to her, leans on the counter opposite where she’s sitting. “And, just an observation, not an assumption: If you did in fact, feel bad for a second, it's the kind of thing Bambi on two legs might do."

She smiles, seemingly a little flustered.

"Fine. You caught me.” She holds up her hands, palms out. “I don't usually do this. If I did I might have thought to check the weather report and adjust accordingly." She drags a hand through her still moist hair.

He is genuinely intrigued by now, and wants to keep the conversation going, but he doesn't want to frighten her off. 

"I'm Jess."

He reaches his hand across the counter, and she grasps it. Woah.

"I know." She points at his nametag with her free hand, and he sighs internally, nothing's private. "I'm Rory." 

She pulls her hand from his grasp. He desperately wants to ask her why she's here but decides to be sneaky about it.

"So, how come you don't usually do this?"

She frowns.

"What do you mean how come? Because school's important. Don't laugh at me!"

He covers his mouth while getting a grip.

"I'm sorry, I just like being right."

"Figures."

"Oh, come on. You do too. You're probably right most of the time-" He starts.

"Don't suck up," she says in a laugh. "Somehow it doesn't suit you." 

He smiles quickly.

"-except today." He finishes and stares at her intently, trying to pry the information from her with the power of his mind.

She’s serious all at once, bites her bottom lip. Shit. He shrugs and forces an easy smile.

"Hey, maybe it’s just one of those days, huh?" He offers.

She nods silently and takes her first sip from her cup.

“This is good.” She says.

“It should be, I made it.” 

He doesn’t want to talk about coffee. He suddenly decides The Jesus and Mary Chain’s white noise that he enjoyed just a while ago is annoying now, when he’s trying to read someone’s mind, but turning off the music might actually be too intimate of a gesture. He turns to the CD-player.

"Do you like The Go-Go's?"

She lights up.

"Yeah."

He takes a microsecond to process that she is perfect.

"Hold on." 

He puts on Beauty and the Beat. The disc is scratched from being played and he has to skip the first tracks. The regular looks up at the intro of Tonite and glares at Jess, who pointedly ignores it and turns back to her. She smiles and they look at each other for a second in silence.

"I don't know what got into me," she blurts. 

He bites back a smile and nods slowly instead.

"I was on my bus and when I got to Hartford, I just got on another bus.” She snaps her fingers. “Just like that. I can't really be more specific," she shrugs. "I've never actually done anything like this before.” She sips her coffee. “Just in my head.” She adds quietly. 

Something clicks inside him at her words. He's pulled plenty of disappearing acts in his days, but never actually got on a bus. He likes to consider himself adventurous, independent, but here's this girl out of private school besting him in badassery.

"I'm guessing you're a native?" She asks.

"Born and raised, sort of," he mumbles, somewhat embarrassed.

"And," she continues, a bit stiffly. "Did you always want to..." she falls quiet, looking around the place.

"No!" He says sharply. "I'm working to save money."

"For what?" 

"To go."

"Where?"

"Away. Don't know where."

"And do what?"

"Don't know that either."

She looks at him for a beat before smiling, and having another sip.

"That's exciting." She says into her coffee mug.

Another click. Is it? Is that why he's going? Or is it just the away-part that matters? She lowers her mug and goes on.

"I'm going too."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah.” She confirms. “To Europe with my mom after graduation, and then- I wanna travel."

"You don't really need a fancy degree from private school to do that." He points out, taking the edge off the statement by rearranging the sugar and napkins on the counter.

She shoots out her chin.

"Well, I'm going to college first.” There’s a pause, and she looks away. “I'm starting Yale in the fall."

He whistles.

"High end."

"My grandparents are thrilled."

"Not you?" 

He bites the inside of his cheek, too sharp. But she doesn’t seem to mind, she twirls a strand of hair between her fingers and looks distantly at the shelf above the coffee maker containing beans and taste syrups. He looks at her fingers in her hair, and jerks when she speaks.

"Well, yes. It's just... It was going to be Harvard up until recently, and... I don't know, it's silly."

She makes eye contact. He stops fiddling with his rag and takes a step closer.

"Foreign to me? Yes. Silly? I doubt it." He forces a calm smile to hide his eagerness over what she’s about to tell him.

She sighs, looks over her shoulder as if spying for someone she knows, this girl must really have a lot of people in her business.

"My grandfather is an alumnus. My mother never went to college. It's like an infected area in their relationship, one of many. And Harvard-"

"Was the alternative which wouldn't drive you mom crazy." He finishes for her.

"Right.” She gives him a look, a tiny smile. “And we really aimed for it too. It was a given, my boyfriend-”

She has a boyfriend, of course. He’s surprised at his disappointment, a sharp burn, what the heck is going on here?

“He even broke up with me for a while over it." She finishes.

He can barely catch his breath.

"Excuse me?" 

There’s a pause as she looks at him, a little startled from what he can tell. Her mouth starts moving before that expression has left her face.

"Well, he wondered how we'd make it work after I left and I didn't exactly know how at that point, I just figured it'd work out somehow, but..."

"But?"

He thinks he sounds too harsh, but can’t really control his output. He hasn’t expressed himself outside hostility and indifference for- how long? He won’t think about it, but makes a mental note to acquire a better range. She in turn looks a little helpless, he thinks and forces a small smile to reassure her. She shrugs.

"But that wasn't good enough.” She says. “He decided it'd be better breaking up on the spot rather than staying together for as long as possible..." She trails off, takes a gulp from her cup.

He bites his lip and takes a breath, leans across the counter with his voice lowered, to not embarrass her.

"He sounds like a bit of a jerk."

She actually smiles a little, tilts her head.

"My mom thought he wasn't really breaking up as much as trying to get my gears working regarding the whole thing.” Her pace quickens, her tone goes light. “He's done it before."

"He’s pulled that shit twice?"

"My mom has a pretty high opinion of him."

Jess raises his eyebrows, unimpressed, neither this random guy or a mother’s opinion means anything to him. She clearly registers it and continues, somewhat defensively:

"It is rare for her, and he is a good guy, really."

He shakes his head.

He knows it's a risk, girls defending their on again off again-boyfriends are usually a feisty bunch, considering most people judge them pretty harshly for their choices. He smiles at her though, and she returns it.

“I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.” She says.

“So be it.” He leans back and randomly wipes away some coffee grounds from the counter. “But I think it was time for our first fight anyway.” Jeez, get your shit together, Mariano.

But she just laughs.

“I think we can handle it with our solid foundation.”

He’s relieved, and pours more coffee for her. He can’t let it lie though, it’s one of his worst traits, he leans closer again, and hands her the mug to soften the blow.

"See, either he broke up with you because he didn't get an answer he liked out of you on the spot or he was blackmailing you to provide one. He might be a good guy, but that’s not good behavior."

She squints at him.

"I'm guessing you're an expert on good behavior?" 

Ouch. He smirks.

"Only in theory."

She smiles at him again, broadly. A moment passes, and then she suddenly shies away from the eye contact, clearing her throat, and goes on talking. 

"Anyway, then my mom figured out I could spend a lot more time at home if I went to Yale- we're tight-”

“I figured.”

“-so she sort of accepted it, even grew to like the idea of it, and my grandparents are thrilled, and I..." She falters, looks at him again, and shrugs. "I told you I didn't really know what was bothering me."

She sips her coffee, remaining quiet.

"May I make an observation?" He asks.

She purses her lips.

"Maybe."

"Seems to me you've been practicing good behavior to the point where it's become a personality trait."

"And that's bad?" She mumbles into her coffee mug again.

"Not necessarily." He shrugs. “It certainly beats the alternative.” He doesn’t use her boyfriend as an example of that, mostly to avoid placing himself in the line of fire.

She lifts her face, straightens her back.

“Learn by doing.” She says.

“And today you did something bad.” He teases.

“Yeah.” She breathes, and that expression she had when she entered the café is back, the one that he thought was misplaced, now he knows where it comes from.

“Any idea why?” The question is casually phrased, but he’s starting to feel like he needs to know.

She smiles behind closed lips, turns the cup between her hands, scraping it against the counter’s surface. She sighs, then starts speaking.

“This year has been such a mess. My grandpa and my mom almost killed each other over the school thing, so when I actually made the choice I couldn’t do it without taking sides.” She gestures, her eyes locked somewhere above his head. “And I wasn’t even meant to be involved with the student counsel at my current school to begin with, but was roped into it by my so-called friend, for like political reasons-” her pace and volume increases, along with her gesturing, “-but she has a lot of enemies who does their best to sabotage everything we’re trying to do, so now, there I am, not even supposed to be there, every week, trying to sort out issues of hem lengths-”

“Well, hem lengths are pretty critical-” He laughs, can’t help it. 

Her gaze falls to him and she smiles through the upset.

“And it’s just school!” She continues. “The last thing in a long list of things. Like, my mom manipulated me into being her partner in a dance marathon, and taking care of a crazy neighbor's lawn and I have two left feet and practically black fingers, and my step mom’s friends left me with her when she was giving birth-” 

Part of her is venting, and the other part is entertaining, her expression is one of sensationalism, he leans on the counter behind him, arms crossed and listens, absorbing it. She goes on.

“And there’s this guy Taylor in my home town, who’s always signing me up for his stupid causes without asking and-” she stops to take a well-needed breath, ”-it all just highlights this feeling I’ve had lately.”

”What feeling?” He asks, slightly breathless, even without speaking.

She smiles, the corners of her mouth twitching slightly.

”That everybody likes me for the wrong reasons.” She nails her eyes to the counter and lowers her voice. “No, not wrong per se, but for… for reasons that have nothing to do with me, who I really am. And today- We were meant to meet up and discuss senior activities, and I don’t know. I just couldn't deal.”

He nods, unable to produce a simple okay. She raises her face again and smiles, kind of bleakly, at him.

“So…” She starts. “Is the therapy included in the price of a cup of coffee?”

He tries to laugh too, but really, it’s just an exhale. It’s starting to catch up with him, the fact that nobody has talked to him, directly like this, for weeks. He is scared to think about it. It makes his chest ache.

“I usually talk a lot just, not about stuff that really matters.” She adds, eyes back on the counter.

“I usually don’t talk much at all.” He offers.

She looks up, seems a bit dazed.

“Well.” She strokes her now dry but slightly tangled hair behind an ear. “Now you know about me. And my mother, and my grandparents, my boyfriend, my education.”

He tears his gaze from her fingers, still behind her ear.

“I don’t know that much.” He tries, certain of where this is heading.

“Tell me about you.”

He’s a stranger in his own life. No one fucking knows him. And now this actual stranger, this girl is gonna be the only one. He reminds himself to breathe, to smile. He turns, grabs a rag and starts to needlessly wipe the counter.

”You’re not gonna tell me?” She asks, tone demanding.

He looks at her, and stops mid-motion. Her eyes. Her look of him owing her something, like they’re in each other’s lives now. The words of protest are on his tongue, automatic, dismissive, worn and safe. But he’s wrong, she’s right, even if it makes no sense. He swallows. He puts the rag down and turns his body to her, meets her eyes and shrugs.

”I don’t have that much going on s’all.” 

I don’t have that much going for me, is what he really means. She’s going to college, she obviously can put two and two together. But she still chuckles, and the relief lets him breathe again.

”I doubt that.” She says.

He gestures around himself, raising his eyebrows, and she laughs. Thank god.

”I live with my mother, who’s also my arch nemesis, in a one and a half bedroom apartment.” It slips from him, he drops the words, and he laughs a little to break their fall. “I also share this space with a steady stream of losers failing at dating the woman with the lowest standards in the lower east side, and whatever shit they’re currently peddling.” 

Laugh or no laugh he shouldn’t be talking about this here, he shouldn’t even be thinking about it. What is going on? He feels the resistance inside but the words keep falling from him, he can’t hold onto them.

“The place is let off a tenant of a tenant but stray paychecks barely cover the rent, thus half of what I make here goes to keeping the shitty roof over my head.” 

He chuckles coldly, and clings hard to his tone, that dry, humorous one.

“That is when my darling mother isn’t threatening to kick me out-” 

He doesn’t really know why he says it, it hasn’t been true for a while. Liz has threatened to ship him off for years, whenever things between them have gotten tough, sometimes to the father he doesn’t know, sometimes to his equally unfamiliar uncle. But last time, a year and a half ago, he yelled that she shouldn’t do him any favors, that he’d be fine on his own, and took off. He managed to stay away for a week, but when he finally made his way back, under the pretext of picking up some of his stuff, she wouldn’t let him go again and wound up crying on the hallway floor until he agreed to stay. He doesn’t know why he says it, maybe it’s comfortable in a way. Every time he tries to pick a fight these days she gets the same look on her face that she had that night he came back, and then she deflects, gets out of his way, leaving him with words burning in his throat. 

“-and I wind up sleeping on other people’s couches.” 

Or in the occasional girlfriend’s bed. He doesn’t say that though. He doesn’t want her thinking about him like that, it’s worrying enough that he’s started factoring in girls’ living conditions to his decision on whether to go with them or not. He does this because he tries to stay out of Liz’s way too, as much as he can, even if it doesn’t make him feel better, but being gone still beats having to live with her like this. And in that instant he gets why; Tearing into Liz is one of the only times he ever gets to be honest, verbally and emotionally, and her denying him that satisfaction makes him miserable at a whole new level. It’s probably why he’s pouring all of his shit over this girl, this stranger. Rory. 

It’s caught up with him, and he can’t ignore it; He hasn’t talked to anyone this much for this long for weeks, possibly, probably longer. He’s scared to look at her, but forces himself to anyway. Her smile is still there, but it’s gotten soft and serious. 

”It’s not that bad. I’m used to it.” He tries.

Not better. He stops talking, but keeps looking at her. She can put two and two together. She’s about to step off an edge and fly, he’s about to take the same step, but with a very different result. Any day now. He opens his mouth, but the man at the table picks that moment to come for a refill, and when he returns to his place in the corner, Jess has had some time to regain his composure, maybe Rory has too. She clears her throat.

“What about your dad?”

“Never met the man.” He smiles firmly, shrugs. “How about yours? You’ve mentioned your mother enough.”

She blushes.

“I feel stupid saying.”

“Please don’t. I asked ‘cause I wanna know.”

“He’s not around much, but I don’t feel right complaining about that at the moment.”

He wishes she would. He wants to listen, to hear her out. He’s desperate to be alone with her suddenly, to give her his full, unguarded attention, but it’s also tied in with his desire to touch her so he can’t go fully earnest.

“Feeling guilty that your problems aren’t as big and bad as other people’s is typical Bambi on two legs behavior.”

She laughs, it bursts out of her like a surprise. A sunbeam falls across the room, and the both look up from it. Outside it’s stopped raining, gotten lighter. The wind has parted the clouds. He looks at her, her gaze is still at the street outside and the light makes her eyes glow. She directs her eyes to him, and smiles, crookedly.

“Mom raised me on her own, my dad was too young for it, now he’s older, but he has a new family.” She sighs. “At least I know who he is, where he is.”

“You don’t have to go all silvery lining on my account. Plenty of misery to go around.”

“Well, aren’t you a ray of sunshine.” She chuckles.

”I am what I am.” 

He can’t stop looking at her. She smiles, drags a finger down the spine of one of his books and follows it with her eyes. He shivers, shifts his weight.

”You like to read.” She says.

”Yup. You too.”

”Yup. And you’re getting out of here.”

“Yup.”

“Going somewhere.”

Going down. He didn’t ask for this. He doesn’t deserve it. This is the best and worst thing that’s ever happened to him.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” She asks, voice full of everything.

He laughs, mainly to get to let something out. She tilts her head at him, eyes attentive. He pulls his hand through his hair and tugs.

“Uhm, I don’t know-” He sighs. “-grown, over it, I guess.” 

“That’s not a career.”

He ruffles his hair, and lets his hand fall, palm up.

“Do I look like someone bound for a career?” He points at her. “And that’s not what you asked, you asked what I wanted to be.”

She smiles.

“Fair enough.”

“How about you?”

“Christine Amanpour.”

He frowns.

“That’s not a career either, that’s a person. A person that’s not you. Why would you wanna be someone else?” Why would this girl want to be anyone but herself?

She looks struck by lightning, pale. He’s gone to work like it’s just any other day, and found a fun house mirror, they’re inverted versions of each other. He’d trade places with her in an instant if it didn’t mean her getting stuck with his shitty life, his place in the world.

“Hey.” 

He reaches for her hand resting on the counter, without thinking about it, and takes it, like he has a right to. His palm folds around it and his fingers slip inside. Wow. She blinks and looks up at him, lower lip falling slightly. Her grip tightens around his fingers.

“You gotta give me your number.” The words are like breathing.

She looks away, but doesn’t move her hand.

“I can’t.”

“Then let me give you mine.”

She looks back at him, tilts her head.

“It’s not about the who gives what to whom, it’s the intent.”

“Well, don’t we decide our intentions?”

She chews on her lip.

“I don’t think we can.”

They look at each other, and there’s awareness in her face now, like she’s realized that she’s stumbled into a parallel universe, an alternate reality. She pulls her hand away.

“I should-” She starts, sliding off the chair.

No. The response in him makes him go cold, the desperation sinking its teeth in. She’s not just some girl, not a stranger, and that is terrifying.

“You hungry?” His tone is impressively even.

There’s a gleam in her eyes, and she smiles broadly, suddenly. 

“Constantly.”

He holds back a sigh of relief, nods, and smiles back at her.

“I’ll make you something.”

She doesn’t ask what or protest. Instead she kicks her bag further in under her chair and slides off it, taking a walk further into the room, inspecting the book shelves, stepping over boxes and bags stacked against them. He has trouble taking his eyes off her and almost cuts himself when he slices the ham; she drags her fingers through her messy hair, and takes off her pull-over, removing the weird little tie. Holy shit. The clouds outside are moving, light goes from obscured to bright and brighter when it mirrors the puddles on the street. She looks up in one of those, eyes bright blue, like a light on their own in the murkiness of the room.

“Bathroom this way?” She asks, pointing.

He nods, and she disappears. Without hesitating, he grabs Howl from her book stack, takes a pen and writes his name and number in the margin, right next to Wild Orphan. He knows this book back and forth and has to stop to think that nothing about this is coincidence. He puts the book down again, biting back profanities as he tries to remember exactly how it layed. In the corner of his eye he sees the regular staring at him. He lets go of the book like it’s red hot and returns his attention to the food.

She comes back, and he finishes making her sandwich. She pulls out her wallet, but he glares at her until she puts it away. She eats, and makes her satisfaction known through noises, and nodding her head, smiling through chewing. He’s hungry from watching and makes one for himself too, despite thinking that maybe it’s not food he needs. 

“Y’know my mom says the closest relationship she has with a man might be with the guy running the local diner.” She says, mouth full of food.

He snorts, slapping a hand over his mouth to keep the food in, and she freezes, having realized what she’s saying.

“‘Cause he feeds her.” She mumbles, blushing.

He forces the food down, nodding.

“I got that.” He says.

She gets redder, and swallows her last bite. She sits still for a while, gulps down the last of her coffee. She looks out the window, then at her wrist watch. He pretends he doesn’t see it. She clears her throat.

“I really should get going, this whole thing, it’s kinda catching up to me. I’m in New York City.” She laughs, breathlessly. “I have to get back, my mom will have a panic attack if she finds out, and I heard that there are these express buses you have to take unless you wanna wind up on the ones making every stop known to man.”

She has to go. And he has to let her. But he can’t say goodbye, not yet, he tells himself. He leans over and glances at her watch.

“Listen, I get off in like fifteen minutes,” he makes eye contact, “if you can wait- let me walk you.”

She nods, almost immediately, smiles a little. He hands her a biscotti.

“You can walk me anywhere.” She gushes.

Luna is his coworker; a surly punk in her twenties who oversleeps more often than not. Fortunately she shows up on time for once - what is it with this day? She grunts a greeting, puts on an apron and takes her place behind the counter, pulling out a comic book of a weird, alternate variety and starts reading. He puts his stack of books in his space behind the counter and goes to get his jacket. He comes back, and Rory stands waiting, backpack on. 

He’s about to usher her outside when he freezes and looks back behind the counter; Her copy of Howl is at the top of his stack. He freezes. She chuckles.

“You weren’t supposed to see that.” 

He looks at her.

“It was meant as a surprise. Something to remember me by.”

He goes cold.

“I can’t-”

“Yeah, you can. I’ll have the perfect excuse to buy the new edition, or find a cooler, older one on the next book sale I come across. All thanks to you.”

His heart sinks. He can’t give it back.

“Thank you,” he musters. “Let’s go.”

The sun is out, she has her pull-over back on, but her jacket in the backpack. They walk in silence. He’s consumed by disappointment, trying to figure out some way to fix this. He wishes he had paid closer attention to her uniform before she shoved the emblemed parts of it down her backpack. Stilton, Dalton. Shit. 

He automatically takes the way of the park, like he does when he needs to calm down. He doesn’t even think about it until they reach the arch and she stops. He looks at her and she looks at it, and at fifth stretching out in front of her, shining from sunlight and wet left from the rain. She smiles at it.

“What?” He asks.

“Can we stay a while you think? Gosh, I should’ve taken notice of the departures.”

He takes hold of her wrist and looks at her watch again.

“I got a pretty decent grip on the time tables, it’s fine if you wanna take a walk.”

He takes off to the left and she follows him into the spring green.

“Why would you know the time tables?” She asks, playful curiosity in her voice, that he can’t match.

“It’s a thing I do sometimes,” he mumbles, “go there, make sure I got the latest version, look at it, learn the times.” Think about going, all the places I could go.

He keeps walking and she almost skips beside him. He glances at her, the light in her hair - what do you call that color? - the irises of her eyes shifting between blue and green in the shade. All the time she’s smiling. 

No wonder she thinks this is fun, she’s on an adventure, anything can, and may happen. He just tried minding his own business, keeping his head down, but he’s been tackled by an existential crisis in the form of a girl. She’s made an unexpected decision, while he’s been handed this, this conversation, this day.

His chest hurts, he wants to smoke, but is unsure if he should, pretty sure she’s not a smoker. If he smokes will she kiss him? Will she kiss him if he doesn’t? He makes the decision and stops, pulling out his pack and offering her a cigarette anyway, with some ceremony. She shakes her head, and wrinkles her nose. Oh well, his chances were slim to begin with. He takes one himself and lights it. They keep walking.

”So, you know I gotta ask about this boyfriend of yours.” He starts, and is truthful, he has to know who gets a girl like her. “Another ivy league prospect?”

She laughs.

“No. He’s a pretty regular guy actually.” She turns around and walks backwards, to face him. “He got into Southern Connecticut State, but he’s still deciding.”

“New Haven. To be close to you.”

“That’s not why he applied there!” She objects.

He snorts.

“He is a good guy.” She insists.

He stifles a sigh, takes a drag, gives her a look.

“I hope you’re right.”

She looks away, a bit pink, turns her back and walks beside him again, their arms touching with every step. He keeps them on the outskirts of the park, next to the fence, walking slowly, to make it last.

“What makes someone good, you think?” She asks, eyes to the ground.

He looks at her, trying to figure out why she asks, what she wants. Seems it’s him that should have asked the question, but now he gets to answer instead. A good guy.

“Not just following the rules, that’s for sure.” He mutters.

He falls quiet, realizing he has no idea how to be a good guy. He’s never really tried. The regular guy who’s with her has broken up with her twice. And now applied to a college in the same city. The whole thing seems insane to him, but maybe the guy has tried to do the right thing, tried to be good in some backwards way, breaking up with her to let her go. And he’s hurt her in the process. Maybe there’s no such thing as a truly unselfish act when you’re in love with someone. 

“Maybe you gotta start by being good to yourself?” He sighs, frustrated. 

She nods, like she’s considering it.

“And is that something you do?” She asks. “Are you good to yourself?”

No, he’s not. No denying it. He’s hellbent on doing the wrong thing as much as possible, but the only person he has left to do wrong by, is himself. He’s been dealt this, without having asked for it, this conversation, this day. He deflects on pure instinct, a hard edge in his voice.

“Are you? Or is all that stuff reserved for the future version of you?”

She stops, and he stops too, afraid to look at her. He clenches his jaws: hellbent on doing the wrong thing. She turns to him, takes a step closer and reaches for his hand. He swallows. She takes the cigarette, burnt down to its filter, from between his fingers, and he looks at her face. She squints at the butt and puts it out against a trash can, dropping it into it. Then she meets his eyes.

“I could probably be better to myself.” She nods gently.

It hurts, but he still smiles, tries to fit an apology into his expression.

“Me too.”

She smiles also, softly, holding his gaze. He bears it for as long as he can, then he looks at her mouth. All there is, is him wanting to kiss her, it fills his head, his limbs. But it’s too big for just one kiss, and more about having her crashing into him, knocking him out of whatever orbit he’s in. Words form in him, ring in his ears, and he clenches his jaws around them; Step into me and push, pull, change me, and I wanna change you too, make you mine. Then a wild exhilaration that seems misplaced, he just met her. Oh god. He looks back at her eyes, and it’s like she heard him. She blinks.

She takes a step backwards, serious.

“I don’t want to ruin this.” She mumbles.

“How would that work?” He objects and has to clear his throat to get his voice back into his words. “How could you ruin this?”

“I could make this extraordinary memory into something-”

He interrupts, objects.

“This is happening right now-”

She ignores him.

“-into something I’d try to forget because we decided to get too familiar.”

Too familiar. He’s pretty sure they passed that mark a while ago. He presses his lips together. He knows he has it in him to kiss her anyway, to play rough and take his chances, her relationship to this obviously random guy means nothing to him. Only, As insane as it is, she means something to him. No one fucking knows him. He can’t let her walk away and feel bad about what’s happened. That's how he would definitely ruin this for himself. He takes a step back, and a slow breath, nods, smiles behind tight lips. 

“Come on.” He says. “We should get going.”

They pick up their pace and pass under the archway, heading north. Under any other circumstances he would have taken the subway, but now? No way. She probably walked here anyway. 

After a few blocks she stops to get a soda, he buys some chewing gum, self conscious about the cigarette. They haven’t spoken since the park, and he wants to, but can’t figure out what to say, he doesn’t want to bullshit her, he wants to keep it real. She helps him out, picks up their conversation again after a few sips from her coke-bottle.

“You know,” she starts, “you shouldn’t feel bad about not being happy with your life right now.” Another couple of steps. “It’ll change, get better.”

His instinct is to mock her, and that’s crap. He smiles instead.

“You know this for a fact?”

She chuckles.

“I have a feeling about you. You’ll be fine.” 

He feels ridiculous leaning into it, listening, soaking it up, but there it is. It’s all he has. 

“Not just fine, but great.” She goes on.

“What you have is a guess.” He mumbles.

She waves her finger at him.

“A guy like you just doesn't fall off the edge of the earth.”

He raises his eyebrows, smiles to hide the fact that that was his exact thought earlier.

“No?”

She turns her face to him, earnest.

“I don’t want you to. So please don’t.”

“What difference will it make when you won’t even take my number?” He starts, forcing humor into his voice to not make it an accusation. “You’ll have no way of knowing.”

She smiles, sunly, gestures to accentuate her words.

“Just say you won’t, and I’ll know that you’re out there somewhere doing okay, doing great, thinking about how right I was about you.”

He laughs. He thought he’d grown out of any romantic notions, but apparently not, he hates that she makes sense. It’s a dance, a game, they’re playing it together. It’s just words, but they’ll make a difference to her, and maybe to him too.

“Fine. I won’t.” He offers.

“You’ll make something good of what you’re given, I know it.”

“And all signs point to you having a very charmed life.” He responds.

Her eyes go absent, but the smile stays on.

“They do, don’t they?” 

“You doubt it?”

She shrugs, and glances at him.

“I just want it to be mine.”

He holds her gaze.

“It will be. Worst case scenario you’ll have to misbehave a little bit. Do something wrong, do something a little bit bad.”

She smiles, a little surprised he thinks. Then she takes his hand, and his heart stops while his body keeps moving, legs walking. Her hand is warm, its grip firm. No girl he ever went with would think to hold his hand. For several moments he thinks of nothing but how it feels to be held onto, trying to record this moment, this feeling, so he’ll be able to relive it when he needs to. They walk like that for a couple of blocks.

“You believe in fate?” She asks, tone more serious.

“No.” He says.

“Me neither,” she says. “At least until today.”

He looks at her helplessly. He gets where she’s coming from, having behaved badly, done something she’s never done before and walked right into this. What are the odds? But he just went to work, as always, and she just happened to come there. It’s the best and worst thing that’s ever happened to him, but it doesn’t make it any less random.

“I think we’ll see each other again,” she says, and looks sure of it. “One way or another.”

He can’t answer with words, so he just squeezes her hand and walks on quietly.

They reach the bus station about ten minutes later and he accompanies her as she buys a ticket, scopes out the dock and heads there with her. There’s a roof overhead, the stops zig-zagging along the space, the ground covered in oil stains, chewed gum and cigarette butts. He makes a point out of spitting his gum into a trash can. 

They stand next to each other silently, waiting for the bus to come in. His heartbeat hurts, every second bringing them closer to part ways. She looks lost in thoughts and chews on her lower lip. For a moment he loves her. Another misplaced feeling, he just met her, and yet… The words are ridiculous and true, he remembers the feeling from looking at his mother as a baby. And just like then it’s nothing but longing. The only shape of it he’s ever known. He still can’t stop looking at her, because any minute it’ll be too late. 

The bus rolls in, people line up. Fuck it. 

He pushes himself away from the wall they’ve been leaning on, reaches for her arm. 

“Wait.” He takes a breath. “We gotta get real.”

She swallows, but remains still, listening. 

“I don’t believe in fate, I believe once you leave here I’m never gonna see you again.” He shakes his head. “You’ve made your case and I gotta respect it even if I think that you’re wrong.” 

He weighs his last words, and takes a step placing himself in front of her. He has to brace himself to be straight like this, he so rarely is.

“How would you feel getting on that bus without having kissed me?”

Her eyes widen, her mouth twitches, like she can’t decide what to do with it. He doesn’t even know why he went with this, he wants her number, for their story to be able to continue, but the bus is here and the discussion will take too long. He goes on. 

”‘Cause i gotta tell ya, I’d feel really bad about it.”

Her eyes fall to his mouth, and she takes a breath. He’s out of acceptable words. She makes eye contact and he steps closer, reaching to touch her hair. She opens her mouth and he halts, expecting her protest. But she leans into his touch instead, eyes scurrying his face. He strokes his hand down her hair, twisting a lock between his fingers and watching it, a bit dazed.

She doesn’t move, doesn’t step away, he feels her breath on his face but can’t look at her or he’ll lose it. In the next instant she puts her lips to his. He has no way of processing the feeling, it’s too much, too good. She has her eyes firmly closed, like she’s going on a roller coaster ride she’s been talked into. But he keeps his open, placing his hands on her neck under her hair to hold her in place, before opening his mouth. Holy shit. She kisses like she talks and he has trouble keeping it together. 

She pulls back, taking a sharp breath and looking at him like a deer in headlight, Bambi on two legs, in a plaid skirt, but now he has the momentum he needs. He can’t let it pass, is all too willing to lead if that’s what’s needed. So he doesn’t let go, just gives her a determined look and keeps kissing her. He takes another step and any space between them is completely gone. He leans her against the wall. She makes a little sound, a little plea, a little purr, and he’s cold and hot. 

Then she pushes back into it and kisses him hungrily, mouth open, like she means it, meant to, like it can go anywhere. Her hands sneak around his waist and up his back and he’s gone, lost. He has to stop or he won’t. 

He pulls back and breathes, looks at her. She leans her head on the wall behind her, eyes half closed, mouth half open, lips, cheeks rosy. More. He swallows and kisses her again. It’s easy this time, going deep, sinking. She’s pliable, so sweetly open. Holy shit, no, not shit, just holy, fucking holy.

“Express bus to Hartford, Providence, Boston, departing at dock 35.”

She whimpers at the sound of the voice over the speakers, and turns her body against his. He lets her go, and she steps sideways, away from her place between him and the wall. Her eyes are wide and wild, her chest rising and falling in sync with his. She turns and takes a few steps toward the bus.

“Rory!” His voice is strange to him, desperate.

She stops and turns to him, eyes shiny. Don’t go. He turns his palms up, shakes his head, shaping his lips around her name again. He can’t do anything else, can’t ask her to stay, it’s too absurd, too real. She shakes her head too, pressing her lips, pink from the kisses, together and climbs the steps onto the vehicle. She can’t do anything else.

He follows the shade, shape of her with his eyes as she boards, and then walks along with her as she searches for somewhere to sit. She takes a seat by the window, he stops, looks. For a moment she stares at the seat ahead of her, then she turns her head, her eyes to him. It’s all there. Holy. 

He smiles at her, and it shocks him. He really feels like crying, but here he is smiling at her. She smiles back, eyes glittering, and it makes him weak at the knees. They smile at each other, while the bus pulls away, they can’t do anything else. He follows the vehicle with his eyes for as long as he can before losing sight of it.

He shouldn’t have kissed her. Because now he can’t imagine living without having done that. And she’s gone and he’ll never do it again. He doesn’t believe in fate. You can’t do that in New York City. He’ll never see her again. 

He leaves the bus station and walks slowly in the general direction of Liz’s apartment, taking the way back around the park. He sits on a bench. He smokes the rest of his cigarettes. It’s getting dark.

He didn’t ask for this. He’s been given this, this conversation, this day, without having to ask for it. It’s a gift, he thinks, despite being in pain. There’s someone like her out there. Someone who knows him.

It’s a Friday, he’s in a rut, and it hadn’t really bothered him so far, not enough to do something about it. But now, something has to change, and he has to change it. He can’t keep being someone to send away, someone left at stations, he has to become a contender if he ever meets anyone he wants like that again.


	2. The Girl

_May_

Rory Gilmore, shining hope of her clan, sits on a bus back to Hartford after having skipped school and all she can think is wait, stop, go back. Not to school, but to the bus station minutes ago, or feet, yards, eventually miles back. She wants the day again, the park, the café, even the rain. But the bus rolls on, taking her further away by the minute.

As she leaves Manhattan, she registers the sensible part of herself, the one that’s usually in charge, shouting something in her ear about how this could cost her the spot as valedictorian, how angry Paris will be, that the very least she could do is feel bad about it. So she tries to. She takes inventory and makes a list in her head. Bad things she’s done today: One, skipped school, gone to New York for no good reason. Two, kissed someone who isn’t Dean, a stranger. Three, and enjoyed it. For a second she’s back at the station, and she clears her throat to shake it.

She thinks about the book she left behind, and stares blankly for god knows how long. She’s still trying to get it together when the bus crosses state lines. She can’t sit still, and distracting herself is not working, not with any of her remaining books. She has to face this. Probably better to do it now before she gets home and has to get back to her real life. 

She glares at her vague reflection in the glass of the window. It’s bad, she tells herself sternly, doing her best at forming a withering stare and aiming it at her mirror image. But if bad feels that good she has a whole new level of understanding for people doing it all the time. Her gaze slides past her own reflection and into the sky and passing landscape. She puts her fingers to her lips. How could she have kissed him like that, touched him like that, told him those things? She’s definitely going to hell. She bites back a sound, takes a few breaths. 

The bus is approaching Hartford before she’s able to be constructive with herself. She was talking about intent earlier. It’s about the intent. Did she intend to do these things? No. She meant nothing by them, they just happened. She knows that’s a thing, her mother’s used it plenty of times. She could say it about skipping school, even about the kiss, but- 

She changes buses to her regular line, Hartland, Goldbrooke, Woodbridge, Stars Hollow. 

But it’s the thing with the book; She left it, knowing it has her name and number in the binder, in case it gets lost. That was done intentionally, with the intent of him seeing it, calling her, just because it wasn’t thoroughly thought through doesn’t make it not true. She can’t get around that.

She gnaws at a nail with unusual ferocity. Why did she even do this? Because she had a day full of stuff that she couldn’t bring herself to care about. But she’s never freaked out over that before, she’s used to doing things because she has to, she doesn’t need to rely on enthusiasm. 

So what happened this morning? She got off the bus, she walked in the direction of Chilton, thought about her classes, her chores, her homework, her date, her full schedule, and her feet wouldn’t take another step in that direction. At the time all she could think was away, and she improvised the rest. What is that saying about idle hands? Idle feet. Somehow her feet, her legs lead her there, here. 

She meant what she said about fate. The chances of her meeting someone like him, someone so distinctly for her, in the first coffee shop she walked into, are astronomical. Yet even the weather seemed to conspire to get her to that specific place. The way the sky held it all together for her, until a block from the coffee shop when it suddenly opened. The way it passed and the sun started shining, so they could walk in the park. She has to consider that there is such a thing as fate, but that doesn’t mean she trusts it, that’s why she left the book.

Her stop is coming up. She has to stop thinking about what happened. There’s no way it exists alongside her everyday reality without something ripping. She tucks it in along with her shirt. She retrieves the tie from her backpack and fastens it at her collar, pulls out her jacket, straightening it and putting it on. She gets out a hairband and puts her hair up in a ponytail. Her being late is nothing new, but she thanks her lucky star she made that particular bus, that Jess knew the time tables, that he took her there. Had she been later she might not have been able to hide any of it, one crack too many. 

She gets off the bus and walks home. As she arrives at the house she sees the jeep on the driveway, and in front of it; her car, the one her boyfriend built for her. He built it for her but she still takes the bus most days, and now she thinks about why. Not for longer than a couple of seconds though, because Lorelai is sitting on the porch. That in itself is nothing strange, her mother often sits here on spring evenings. But she gets up when Rory comes walking across the untamed lawn and puts her hands on her hips. Shoot.

“Hey kid.” She says.

Rory fiddles with her hair to buy time, to take her voice for a test run. She smiles lightly.

“Hi mom.”

Lorelai’s shoulders rise and fall in a sigh and she walks down the steps to the lawn. Rory stops a few feet from her.

“Turns out those fancy private schools actually call when you skip class.” The words are evenly paced, uh-oh.

“Sorry.” Rory says, immediately.

She’s calm on the surface, it’s the only way to handle Lorelai, but she counts on this becoming a thing, it’s only a matter of how big, and it’ll depend heavily on how she responds.

“Check your phone.” Says Lorelai.

Rory pulls it out; She turned it off early, when she got on her bus from Hartford, to not get sidetracked or chicken out, she meant to turn it back on, but then the world shook and she forgot. What was she thinking? She turns it on despite knowing what’s coming, she does it slowly while scrambling for something to say, an explanation. Her phone beeps furiously as the missed calls are announced. 

“You know,” Lorelai goes on, “I am grateful I was super-busy all day. They didn’t reach me until about an hour ago.”

An hour. Of panic. Of not knowing. And it could have been so much worse. Rory’s nauseous with guilt. What was she thinking?

“Mom, I-”

“Where have you been all day?”

She knows better than to not answer.

“New York.”

Lorelai’s eyes widen.

“New York? Did you have an aneurysm? What would possess you-?” She gestures vividly. “It’s in moments like this I really hate knowing you as well as I do,” she makes eye contact, “because it makes it so much scarier, so much worse, that I really have no idea what could've gotten into you for this to happen.”

This is what her mother does. A simple why is not enough even if it would be enough for Rory’s gnawing panic to blow up completely. Instead it’s a whole statement on how scary it is that Lorelai Gilmore didn’t see it coming, with a pretty strong undercurrent of berating. It doesn’t matter that she kind of has the right to apply it, Rory still frowns, unreasonable annoyed under the circumstances.

“Moments? Plural? What other moments like this have there been?”

Lorelai frowns back.

“You know that’s part of my concern. Should I take you to a hospital? Any other kid- If you had been any other kid, I would’ve grounded you and that would be that, but you. You’re you! Good girl Rory. What’s wrong?”

Double-shoot. Rory bites her lip. What the heck is wrong with her? She’s had a lot of time to get this kind of behavior out of her system. Her mother has been expecting it, has almost seemed disappointed she hasn’t acted out.

“That’s right, I always behave.” Rory stares at her shoes, lowers her voice. “You can’t let this one slide?”

“Don’t go there.” Lorelai says sharply. ”You don’t get to do that, like I’m not the coolest mom on planet Earth! But our binary of best kid to coolest mom doesn’t cancel everything out!” She shakes her head. “Lemme put it this way: either you have an adult conversation about what happened, or I handle this like any other mother would.”

Rory wants to keep arguing, mostly to keep it all at a distance from herself, she can’t very well explain it to someone else when she doesn’t even understand it herself. Arguing doesn’t come naturally to her either, but maybe she can make it about something other than herself. She sighs, and sits down next to her mother. 

“You never did anything like this?”

Lorelai makes a little sound, some kind of laugh.

“Of course I did, but I’m normal.” 

Rory smiles.

“That’s debatable.”

Lorelai shoves her, and she’s so relieved at the gesture the words just spill out of her.

“Well, I wish I could give you a clear answer. I just-” She interrupts herself before finishing. 

“I’m so sick of... Paris.”

Without knowing the truth herself she still recognizes what isn’t it. It’s not just Paris. She feels… overgrown, that’s what it is, and Paris isn’t the only vine climbing her. But Lorelai laughs.

“So you went to New York?”

“Ha-ha. I just couldn’t sit through another meeting of her and Francie making every issue personal and act like the rest of us should have to care about their crap.” 

“Politics isn’t for you, huh?” Lorelai chuckles.

“Never thought it would be.” Rory gestures. “But here I am.”

She feels like starting some useless rant about how she can’t believe someone as opinionated as her mother never bothered to teach their daughter how to say no, but is a bit too angry with herself to be generous.

“And there’s nothing else going on?” Lorelai asks.

There is, she has processes running in the background that she doesn’t even have time to acknowledge or identify. Maybe she doesn’t want to know. Because her reality is delicately put together and if you move one part the entire thing is compromised. She can’t just toss it off. Maybe that’s the real reason she bailed, talked to a stranger about what bothered her, kissed him. Maybe it’s all there, in the elsewhere. And she can’t tell Lorelai. 

“No.” She says. “I guess it’s all a bit much right now.”

“Yeah. I guess I can understand that even if I never lived it myself, my last time in high school.”

Rory looks back at her shoes. Lorelai puts an arm around her.

“At least this proves you’re not a changeling after all.” She taps her fingers against Rory’s shoulder. “All is forgiven.”

It’s very possible Lorelai would understand this, no matter how badly her daughter has behaved. But Rory can’t tell her. And she doesn’t even know why, not really. It’s just an instinct, a really strong one. The wall paper from The Cheshire Cat flashes before her eyes. She still remembers it. She looks at her mother, who smiles at her. 

“But next time you have a break down, could you give me a call first? Or y’know, have it on a Sunday? That headmaster of yours freaks me out.”

“Sure mom.” Rory smiles, and only hesitates a moment. “I should go, I told Dean I’d have dinner at his place.”

Lorelai shrugs.

“Who has two thumbs and is the coolest mom on planet Earth?”

Rory looks at her, overcome by tenderness all at once. She pecks her mother’s cheek and hurries inside. 

She breathes easier once inside her room and looks down, at the uniform she’s in, the one that came with no guarantees today. Suddenly she’s smiling, a stray of wild laughter tries making its way out of her, but she swallows it. She undresses, and changes her clothes before going back outside. Lorelai’s still on the porch when she steps off it.

“Hey hun?” 

Rory turns at the sound of her mother’s voice. 

“Did it do something for you?” Lorelai asks. “Did it help?”

Rory only thinks about the answer for a second.

“Yes.” Without knowing the entire truth herself she still recognizes it.

Lorelai smiles.

“Well then.”

Rory walks. The sun is setting. It’s pretty and she thinks about how it’s possible for her to feel this way, to enjoy a stupid sunset after what she’s done. She takes a breath and takes inventory, makes a list. Things she learned today: 

One, that she can get on a bus just because, that she can exist for herself in a world that is full of other people, and there’s a person in it that can kiss her like that. 

He does live in New York though, and he’s going away. So is she. Penpals, or phone buddies is what’s in store for them, if he calls. And distance does tend to come with a hands off clause, so it’ll sort itself out. She doesn’t have any male friends, it might be time for one. But the kiss, that kiss, those kisses... He might have the impression she wants to be more than friends. What happens if he calls? Anything.

She’s getting off topic and tries to focus. The list, the things she learned today: Two, that the world is bigger and smaller at the same time and that she can be guilty and defiant and that it’s impossible to keep count and she is deliriously happy and scared and sad and it’s spring and anything can happen, and she’s alive in her own life which is hers, she’s in a position to toss it off if she decides to. Because she has a secret. His mouth on hers, his hand in hers, the words between them. It’s all there, in the elsewhere. And it did help, even if she’s not sure how.

She can’t let guilt ruin the day, turn it into something bad in itself just because she misbehaved. She’ll have to own it, carry it inside, where it’ll be untouched. There are no limits to her that she knows of, the world is in her, she feels it in her heartbeat, big and achy. She chews on her lips, wonders vaguely if she smells like that one cigarette, and why she didn’t brush her hair or take time to jump in the shower before going for dinner at her boyfriend’s.

He wasn’t really a stranger, was he? They knew each other from the get go, somehow. She tries putting her finger on some magic moment that reveals how they’re kindred without succeeding. It bothers her, she can’t find a place to put it. But it’s not an all bad feeling, because it doesn’t need to fit in her carefully constructed reality. She rounds the corner to Dean’s street and has to drop it anyway, let it fall where it may. 

She rings the bell and feels sickly nervous while waiting for him to answer the door. But as soon as he does- distracted and half submerged in an argument with his sister, pecking her cheek and ushering her inside- the feeling goes away. It seems easy to forget. 

They have dinner and watch a movie with Clara, who has to go to bed halfway through. When they’re left on the couch together he puts his arm around her shoulders. There’s nothing weird about the gesture, he does that all the time, but now it’s all she can think about. On one hand she clings to the normalcy of him holding her and wishes he’d do more, and on the other hand it makes her squirm and hope that he doesn’t kiss her. It’s intensely uncomfortable, an itch she has no way of scratching. When they say goodnight she stands inside his arms in the hallway, her forehead against his chest and breathes him in for a long while, then he kisses her and she holds still. 

She walks home and feels a little more even. Her thoughts still push and pull at her but habit is a beautiful thing, she systematically plans for the day ahead, constructs a story for Paris. She gets home and into bed, and keeps it up. It’s rhythmic, steady, repetitive and peaceful. She falls into darkness. 

At first it’s quiet. Then she’s emerging from deep, green foliage. There’s a scent of cigarette smoke. She’s been lost, but now she knows where she’s going. She spots the arch and heads there. She looks around, the park is empty. She squints at fifth avenue and it burns her eyes, rising like a wall in front of her. She still sets off running. I need to move. The street is steep, water is streaming in the opposite direction and it’s like trying to climb a waterslide. She keeps slipping. Her breath tears up her throat and she falls, gets wet, skins her knees. Her body burns and she pants, the pain making its way out through her voice. She keeps going, or she’ll miss the bus. She arrives at the station and her steps and voice echo through the building. She exits onto the dock and it smells heavily of exhaust fumes. The place is empty except for her bus at the far end, headlights on, engine running. She runs, wet skirt sticking to her legs, but the vehicle starts moving. She cries out, steers straight into its light and stops it. I need you to move me. The door opens and she practically falls up the stairs, palms pushed into the rough carpet. It’s dark, the air is still, there’s a smell of foam rubber, the only light comes from the aisle floor. All the seats are taken, by anonymous, silent shapes. She looks up and sees him in the middle seat of the back row. He looks at her and the pain in her heaving chest starts to feel like something else. Her breaths are the only sounds filling the space. She walks up to him and sits on his lap, without a word, one sore knee on each side of him. All the seats are taken, and the pain isn’t pain anymore. She fits there like a puzzle piece and he looks at her, leaning his head back onto the headrest, mouth slightly open. Step into me and push, pull, change. He takes her hand, his fingers slipping into her palm and she squeezes them, holding on while something tips inside her, spills over. 

She wakes up from her own sound and for a moment she could either be back in her dark bedroom or at the dock where he leans her on the wall and gets too familiar. She wants the day again, but not exactly the same. She should have stayed, she thinks, under the cover of darkness, lost, and looking to stay that way. The pleasure hurts again and makes its way up her throat as a stifled whimper and a couple of tears that get absorbed by the pillow.

A week passes. Anything can happen, but nothing does. Paris isn’t mad at her, just assumes she was sick, and was too busy fighting Marcie anyway. Lorelai calls headmaster Charleston with some excuse on how she completely forgot about a doctor’s appointment and then rants Rory’s ear off about how he still freaks her out. 

Rory jumps everytime the phone rings. The more time that passes between her and the day, the more it seems like a dream. Everything is the way it was before. Lorelai hasn’t brought it up since their talk on the porch, and Rory certainly hasn’t mentioned any of it to Dean, who hasn’t asked either. She’s the only one who knows, and for a couple of days she carried the secret like a price, but now she’s losing grip on what it means. Details get hazy. Maybe she imagined stuff. Sometimes you think something’s there, even when it’s not.

He lost the book. The book was taken. The book was destroyed, ripped to pieces by that punk colleague of his, what else can you expect from a comic reader? He hasn’t been back to work. He was hit by a car. Rory shakes her head, shakes it off, steers her thoughts with force; Or maybe he hasn’t gotten the opportunity to read poetry.

She and Lane have a date set up for planning prom. They meet at Kim’s Antiques, pick a table in the corner of the shop, and spread out their notes, their identical lists, like they’re synchronizing watches.

“The guys are still in charge of the Limo, right?” Lane asks, pen ready.

“Yes, but are we sure we’re still doing that?” 

Rory is starting to feel a bit uncomfortable with the traditional aspects of it, she has a foot each in two worlds and doesn’t feel entirely at home in any of them. The only thing she’s continually been sure about is going with Lane. Lane, who’s now staring at her with sharp indignation.

“Stars Hollow High getting banned from Woodbridge Inn means we can walk.” Rory clarifies. “The new place is just a mile away, we could save the money.”

“For what, may I ask?” Lane sounds as dramatic as she looks. “My life is over come summer, and I need to go out with a bang.”

What’s important is Lane getting to be happy. Rory swallows her hesitations.

“Okay.”

Lane checks off the item on her list, significantly calmer.

“Besides, we’re walking back.” She says.

“So, adding to the list,” Rory says, “pack sneakers.” 

Both girls write it down on their individual lists.

“And after?” Lane goes on.

“Kyle’s party. Dean told me some kids wanted to rent the entire Motel Six but I told him I preferred the party.”

“More exclusive.”

“Definitely.”

Lane sighs.

“And I will be walked to my door, have my hand shook and possibly my cheek pecked by my escort.”

Rory gasps and shoves Lane lightly.

“You think Mrs Kim will let Dave peck your cheek?”

“A girl can dream.” Lane shoves her back. “Put it down.” She gestures at Rory’s list and starts writing on her own while mumbling along with the letters she’s penning: “Get walked to door, get cheek pecked, questionmark.”

Rory sighs, but makes a point for Kyle’s party on her list. Lane clears her throat.

“Incidentally, at our gig I noticed that Kyle’s house has a lot of spare bedrooms.”

Rory swallows and locks the smile to her face.

“Did you?” She mumbles.

“I did.” Lane peers at her. “One might think that Kyle even had some form of plan for the distribution of said bedrooms on such a momentous occasion as prom night.”

“One might.”

“And that Dean might have had an eye on one of them.”

This isn’t out of the blue, at least not from a collective point of view.

“He might.” Rory admits.

“Rory! You're supposed to tell me stuff like this!”

Rory leans closer, speaks lower.

“You’re the one insisting that all these walls have ears.”

“Well, one might speak in code as to not alert said ears to any incriminating key words.”

Rory sighs. Sex might be part of collective graduation culture but the truth is that she hasn’t even discussed it with Dean. Them spending the night in Miss Patty’s studio is the closest they’ve come to sleeping together. Their physical relationship hasn’t escalated past kissing. 

And it hits her there and then; Since all they do is kiss she’s done the worst thing she could do to him by kissing someone else. She knows it’s not a lethal sin on like, an objective scale, but to the two of them- And she did it, just like that. She’s going to hell. All the great philosophers are probably there; If a tree falls in a forest- 

“I have to tell you something.” She starts before having had time to think about it.

Lane’s eyes immediately start glowing.

“What?” She smiles in anticipation.

“I skipped school last Friday.”

“No!”

Rory has to smile, had she told Louise and Madeleine about this they wouldn’t have batted an eye, they would probably have yawnef at the fact she hadn’t had any visible tattoos to show for it. She’s grateful her best friend is so easy to entertain.

“Yes.” She insists.

“Why? What did you do? Did you go to the mall, the movies, oh! Did you go to Yale?”

Rory interrupts knowing this could go on for a while, and that would give her too much time to reconsider.

“I could tell you if you let me.”

“Sorry.”

“I went to New York.”

Lane compensates her high-pitched exhilaration with lowering her voice, which has a pretty hilarious effect.

“Oh my god! That is so cool! You are my idol! What did you do?”

Rory feels silly for being excited by her best friend’s response, but she is, that way she gets to relive the experience.

“I got off the bus and just walked, I don’t think I’ve thought so little about what I was doing in my entire life!” She smiles broadly while talking and Lane returns it, almost vibrating in her seat.

“What happened?”

“It started raining, and I ran, and went into the first coffee shop I could find, and Lane, it was a book café!”

“New York!” Lane laughs. “Did you bring any back?”

“No. I left one though.” Rory regrets saying it as soon as the words are out of her mouth, but that’s part of the point, the secret she was happy to carry to begin with is getting heavy.

“What, why?” 

Rory shrugs, almost theatrically, like it was the most obvious thing to do.

“The guy behind the counter lost his copy.”

“You went to New York to distribute literature? Like some weird missionary?”

Rory bursts out laughing and slaps her hands over her mouth to make herself stop, she doesn’t want to though, she feels like losing it, she’s never needed a good flip-out like right now. Lane blinks at her.

“Why would you-” Her expression changes, her eyes widen. “Was he cute? The guy?”

Rory shrugs, hands still firmly over her mouth.

“He was!” Lane exclaims. 

Rory hushes her through her fingers, but Lane just gasps. 

“Wait! Do you still love Dean?”

Rory replaces her giddiness with annoyance, just like that.

“Why do you ask? Because I gave some guy my book?”

“Bible kiss bible.” Lane simply says and raises her eyebrows. “I’m something of an expert.” She adds.

Rory blushes, and starts backpedaling. The important thing is that Lane gets to be happy on this one night, what was she thinking sharing information that might jeopardize that?

“It was just a stupid adventure, the guy lost his copy, I gave him mine, I had a cup of coffee, he walked me to the bus.” If she says it it might make it true, like a spell. 

Maybe he lied about liking Ginsberg, maybe he lied about reading, it is a book café after all, that book stunt would be easy to pull, maybe he played her. 

“It was nothing!” Rory says, a bit louder than she intends, but the word makes her feel better, nothing.

Lane starts smiling again, sort of wishfully this time. 

“You skipped school, and went to New York and flirted with a cute guy-”

“Running into a cute guy was just a coincidence.” Rory insists. “What I have with Dean is so much- He’s my boyfriend, he’s going to college in the same town as me-” 

She’s taking inventory of things that are real, and if she says them out loud it might make them true, too. But Lane barely listens, just leans her face in one hand and reaches for Rory’s list with her free one. She puts them next to each other, comparing them, now that they’re different.

“You get to stay out all night on prom night if you want to.” Lane sighs.

Rory goes on, almost automatically.

“We’re going to prom together, we’re gonna-” She falls quiet.

Dean is a traditionalist, and losing your virginity on prom night is as big of a tradition as they come. They haven’t discussed it, but she has to consider the possibility that he has made preparations, that he just assumes- And it’s probably for the best. It’s expected, it’s in the manual. And she does appreciate clear instructions. Plus it would get her out of this cheating on her boyfriend pickle. If they start having sex, a stupid kiss falling in a forest that no one even knows about isn’t going to be a blip on the radar. She nods and forces a smile.

“In fact, I’m gonna put it on the list,” she grabs it and starts writing, “lose vir-”

Lane shushes her sharply. Rory freezes. Lane snatches the pen from her hand.

“And don’t write it down either. The walls have eyes!”

Rory chuckles, and Lane smiles, reluctantly.

“But I am glad we reached a decision in the matter.”

“It is important to come prepared.”

They smile at each other.

“Wow.” Lane says.

“Yeah.”

Another week goes by and she regrets leaving the book.

If she hadn’t left it along with her number she could’ve just let it all fade into the distance, now there’s an actual looming possibility that he, Jess, will call. But he hasn’t, and she’s hopelessly distracted by that fact too. All sorts of different elaborate rationalizations have paraded through her head, some returning for reprises at the worst times, when she’s trying to sleep, when she’s trying to study. It’s exhausting. 

And she has final exams. She tries to be firm with herself, glares at her philosophy text book. There is an explanation, one requiring few assumptions, one that William of Ockham would have liked, one that involves them both; He has seen her number, and he hasn’t called because she got on the bus. She made a decision too, as far as he was concerned. She’s cold from the thought, as a sinkhole opens up inside, 

It’s about a week and a half before prom and she and Dean are sitting in her room. She’s at her desk reading and he’s sitting on her bed looking through a bunch of brochures, spread out across the space left available. The whole scene is strange to her, when they’re together the most usual setting is him watching her doing her homework, watching TV to pass the time, but now he’s the one completely engrossed. The material is from Southern Connecticut State and he has a glow about him as he squints at the paper, lips slightly moving as he reads.

If it weren’t for her he wouldn’t have applied. She knows that. She remembers being so proud of him when he told her he was doing it, proud of herself too, of the effect she’d had on him. But that was before Yale. Then she made her decision. And when she told him, he was so happy, while she realized she hadn’t even thought of it as a point in the pro column, not even after he broke up with her over her Harvard plans. It’s the strangest thing. 

It’s partly habit, the girl power is strong in her house, a guy isn’t a valid argument to base any decision on in any direction. She learnt that if not before, then after she left Stars Hollow High, she still blushes about how stupid she was; Greatness within reach, a cute guy talks to her and she’s ready to walk away from it, her mother has never been more right. The fact that that same cute guy has been her boyfriend since then is hardly relevant, in fact, it just makes the point stronger; If a relationship is meant to be it’ll work out even if you’re apart.

Still she left the book. And still she doesn’t know how to feel about sharing the same college town with her boyfriend. She shakes her head, thinks of something else. The prom. The plan. It might change all those iffy feelings. People are always going on about how sex changes things.

The thing is though, all they do is kiss, and it’s nice, lovely, really. But it never makes her hungry. It never makes her itch to do anything else. Once he touched her breast while they were making out. She was nervous and started giggling. He hasn’t repeated it, he knows her and her mother too well and probably doesn’t want to subject himself to being something they giggle about together, more than he already is. But the truth is she is happy enough in that place of theirs, her neck arched, his bent, like a bee to a flower. She hasn’t thought twice about it, and up until now she hasn’t thought there was anything wrong with that. Because she hasn’t had anything to compare it to. Maybe she’s being unfair, probably, and it wouldn’t be the first time. It’s not like that’s all they do by absolute choice, they’re just never unchaperoned, undistracted, there’s always Lorelai, Clara, homework, college applications, laundry, by color. 

She tries to sort it all away, to leave just him. She smiles a little watching him, his hair, kind eyes, long fingers. She gets up and sits down next to him, leaning her head on his shoulder, breathing him in, some days he overdoes it with the cologne, but not today, today he just smells like his mother’s detergent, clean and safe. She hooks her arm around his, dragging her fingertips over his knuckles. He speaks.

“With the scholarship it’ll work.” 

He turns his head to her, accidentally loosening her grip on him. He smiles, clearly already in New Haven in his mind. She smiles a little, he reminds her of herself, for as long as she’s been able to dream about college.

“We could even go to lunch some days.” He smiles.

She diverts her eyes to his brochures, filled with pictures of well-lit auditoriums, happy students and winning sports teams. He lets go of her completely, turning his body to her to make eye contact, dropping the smile for a more goal oriented expression.

“Hey, and you’re definitely settled with living on campus, right?”

“Pretty much. Why?”

“I’ll probably have to get a place to live, and I thought, maybe you’d wanna…”

She’s startled that her mouth still knows how to speak.

“Move in together?” Her throat feels dry. “They don’t have campus housing?” She asks, turning her face to look for information of that sort in his brochures.

He wrinkles his nose.

“I don’t know if the whole dorm thing is for me.”

“I have it on pretty good authority it’s part of the obligatory college experience.” She says lightly, while glancing at him to keep track of his reaction.

He doesn’t look completely unreasonable, but follows her gaze with his, eyebrows raised.

“Maybe.” He allows, before looking back to her and obviously dropping her idea. “It would be a practical decision, you and me living together,” he says quickly, “we could get a better place and save money.”

Stunned silence doesn’t really work well with Dean, she’s learned that. After three years, two breakups and countless tiffs her emergency routine kicks in automatically. She smiles calmly, coolly.

“Okay. I’ll think about it.”

“Unless you’d want it to be like a real living together situation.”

For a second she’s so angry she can’t even look at him, she can hear his expression in his voice well enough. It always has to be all or nothing with him. She has learned to live with his weaknesses. The first time they broke up, over three words, she learned something about herself too, something not so flattering, a weakness. After three years she has learned how to navigate him, but sometimes it seems like he hasn’t learned a thing about her. At least if his behaviour is any indicator. Maybe that’s her fault, or just how relationships work; The first one to give in, to modify their behavior ends up always being the one doing that. When was the first time she gave in? The first time they broke up? Or earlier. That damn Donna Reed-thing. It was only meant to be a joke, but he never did laugh, just smiled, and that meant something different. She has to look at him, or he’ll think something is wrong. She forces her gaze to his face.

“I’d be up for anything.” He adds, a certain vulnerability in his eyes.

Maybe she’s being unfair, probably, and it wouldn’t be the first time. Unfair to him and to love. Her track record isn’t exactly long, but her mother’s track record is, and they share most things. She remembers the Cheshire Cat Inn, why can’t she forget that horrible wallpaper?

It’s just the absence of a certain kind of gravity between her and Dean, no big deal, maybe all it takes is her, leaning into it a little. She might already be doing it, she did get on the bus. Maybe what really irks her is that she has to choose it, because now she knows what it feels like, the gravity, the urge, the power that makes things just happen, like at the station. There’s a pull in her at the thought and she bites the inside of her cheek to rid herself of it. 

“I’ll think about it.” She reaffirms.

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

When he’s gone she tries to imagine it. Them living together. Owning plants, cooking budget food, doing laundry. But she can’t get the fantasy past telling her mother. So she pictures that too. Lorelai would laugh her head off. That’s how absurd it would seem to her, and therefore that's how it seems to Rory too. She should probably start smaller, or bigger, depending on who you’re asking; She tries the other thing, imagining them sleeping together, but she stops after a little while, it takes too much brain power to steer clear of the memory of the bus station. 

A few days later she and Lorelai are having breakfast at Luke’s. Rory has her school books spread across the two tables they’re occupying, compensating her lack of focus with studying every left-over moment. Usually it’s a worthless tactic since her mother won’t stop yapping, but this morning Lorelai’s oddly quiet. Rory glances at her wondering if she has something on her mind, but sees she’s trying to eavesdrop on the conversation Luke is having over the phone; She bends herself impossibly in her chair, doing everything short of cupping her ear in his direction.

“What are you doing?” Rory hisses as Lorelai almost falls out of her chair leaning toward Luke.

“I’m trying to find out if he’s talking to a girl.”

“Why does that matter?”

“I wanna find out if he’s dating someone.” Lorelai says, like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and maybe it is.

“Well, then I certainly hope he’s talking to a woman and not a girl-” Rory remarks. 

Lorelai sticks out her tongue at her.

“You know you are turning more and more into Miss Patty and Babette with every passing day.” Rory adds.

“Well, which one is it?”

“Take your pick.” Rory gives up and closes her chemistry book. “And, why do we care about Luke’s dating-status?”

“Because he never dates.”

“Right, he never dates. Not even when that lawyer of Taylor’s was openly flirting with him did he ask her out. So why would he be dating someone now?”

Lorelai looks back at Luke.

“I just think it sounds like he’s talking to a girl- a woman.”

“You have too much time on your hands.” Rory gets back to her breakfast. 

“It’s not natural living like a monk.” Lorelai mutters.

“Mom!” Rory bites. “Set him up with someone or leave him alone.”

Lorelai turns her attention back to her and tilts her head.

“Speaking of which-” 

Uh-oh. 

“Prom’s coming up.”

“It is.” Rory admits.

“Prom night.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Anything you wanna tell me about your plans?” Lorelai leans her chin in her hand. “When I can count on you coming home for instance? What you’re doing after the dance?”

Rory opens her mouth, but Luke makes a few repeated sounds, like he’s trying to speak but keeps getting interrupted, and Lorelai turns her attention to him again. He makes a few exasperated gestures which might have mattered had he been in the same room as his conversational partner. Then he raises his voice, to drown out the person on the other end.

“Well, I can’t believe I’m saying this, Liz, but I think you made the right call.”

Rory raises her eyebrows as Lorelai turns back to her, triumphant expression on her face.

“Huh.” Rory says. “You were right about it being a woman. How do you do that?”

Lorelai shrugs smugly. 

“But if that tone of his is any indicator I think I know why he doesn’t date much.” Rory adds.

Lorelai gestures dismissively.

“Liz is just his sister.”

“Oh.”

“So?”

“So?”

“Prom night?”

Rory sighs and loads a fork with scrambled eggs shoving it into her mouth, chewing pointedly. Lorelai holds out her palms.

“What? You always said you’d tell me when.”

Rory swallows, not only to get her food down.

“I know.”

“And?”

Rory takes a breath, looks out the window. She thinks about the conversation with Lane, and how those were just words, how nothing has changed since then, except Dean asking her to move in with him, a proposition so absurd it might just as well not have happened. He can ask her to live with him but can’t take her to second base. She sighs.

“And, it won’t happen then.”

“You don’t always know in advance-” Lorelai objects.

“I do.” As soon as the words leave her mouth she knows it’s not just something she says to get her mother off her back.

Lorelai squints as her.

“Does he?”

“I don’t know what he knows.” Rory mumbles.

“Something happen?”

Something has happened, it just has nothing to do with Dean.

“Nothing’s happened.”

That’s part of the problem, but she forces a smile. She briefly considers bringing up Dean’s proposal, but every part of her screams in protest at the impulse. Lorelai stares her down as she gathers the books from the tables and loads them into her backpack, then she sighs, but smiles.

“Well, what kind of mother would I be if I protested my daughter’s decision to wait.”

Is that what she’s doing, waiting? And for what? Rory smiles without meaning it. There’s a distinct hint of pride in her mother’s bafflement, that she really doesn’t want to dwell on. Every time she’s talked to Lorelai about Dean and the future her mother has brushed it off. You’re not supposed to think about that now. But it’s been framed less like waiting and more like she’s supposed to live in the moment. And Rory has listened, and followed the advice, mostly grateful that she didn’t have to deal with it. She’s had enough to do planning for college, a career in journalism, becoming Christine Amanpour. 

“And, y’know-” Lorelai goes on, “-there’s no rush, especially now that he’s going to Southern.”

Now that he’s going to be living in New Haven, possibly with her.

“No rush.” Rory echoes, before emptying her coffee cup and running for the bus.

A couple of nights later she and Dean go to a screening at the bookstore. The Princess Bride. They’ve been waiting for this date since the store first announced the screening, or she has. It’s one of her actual, unironical favorites, but tonight it makes her want to cry. Life is pain, anyone telling you otherwise is selling something. Love’s keen sting, where’s that phrase from again? It has a certain something. It should sting, right? Life, love is meant to be able to hurt. Why hasn’t Jess called?

Dean is her boyfriend. He was the first person she ever kissed, he’s subjected himself to all sorts of torment and humiliation to be with her, he built her a car, he applied to college, not to be near her, because that was when they still thought it was going to be Harvard, but to please her, he’s bent over backwards for her, hurt himself. But he can’t hurt her. 

They’re walking back afterwards. He holds her hand. She’s miles away.

She loves him. It’s just, love... It’s not what she expected. Love isn’t pain, at least not the kind she’s known. It is what she should have expected; All the stories end the same way: happily ever after. She’s such a good student, how could she not have listened? He has fought, she has waited, watched, been won, not done any fighting herself, none. She was expecting love to be an adventure, not everlasting catharsis after a struggle that wasn’t even hers. She’s been Buttercup, but now she sees she really wanted to be the Dread Pirate Roberts. 

Jess has seen her number, and he hasn’t called because...He doesn’t want to. It all happened, but she imagined his urgency, their connection, it was really nothing to him.

Sometimes you think something’s there, that a feeling is mutual, when it’s just not. It is the simplest explanation, and those do tend to be true. She’s surprised at how much it hurts to consider, several times she imagined herself hanging up on him, or pretending it was a wrong number, had he called. She almost jumps out of her skin when Dean speaks.

“You’re quiet.” He remarks. 

She mumbles an apology. He turns around and starts walking backwards facing her. 

“Did you get a chance to think about what we talked about?”

It makes sense that he would assume that, it’s not like she hasn’t tried.

“Not really,” she’s forced to admit.

He stops, sighs.

“Rory-” He stops himself, looks at the ground and frowns.

Silence doesn’t really work well with Dean, she’s learned that. And now she’s going to start working on her own weaknesses, she kind of has to when he won’t meet her halfway.

“Listen,” she starts, “I just don’t think we’re there yet, we haven’t even-” she stops herself.

She can’t imagine them living together because she can’t imagine them sleeping together, or maybe it’s the other way around. She never dreamt of a boyfriend, he was a nice surprise. He’s nice, she’s nice. So nice that she never had the guts to think about what it meant that she couldn’t even imagine him into her future. That’s her weakness.

Every time she’s talked to Lorelai about it she’s brushed it off, and Rory has followed suit, lived in the moment, except when it came to college, and journalism, and becoming Christine Amanpour. What Lorelai really was abstaining from saying as nicely as she could was: he’s not meant to be part of your future. And Rory let it lie, left it alone. She agreed, but then again, how could she not?

“Haven’t even what?” Dean asks, an edge in his voice.

Why kiss Jess? She’d left the book, it didn’t have to be never again. She could’ve gotten on the bus and been in the free and clear, legally speaking. But he talked to her, and touched her hair, and she wanted to. She wanted to kiss him and that was enough gravity to make her fall. She wanted to. No other reason. 

Sometimes you think something’s there, and it’s just not.

“I wanna break up.” 

Not we should, it’s better if we, or it’s not you; I want to. She can’t follow up the phrase with anything. So she just lets it lay there between them, listening to the echo of it and experiences how it comes to rest in her, making space for the feelings she hasn’t been able to place before.

“What?” 

She’s heard him say that word in that way before. Many times. It usually causes her to go soft and small. But she can’t now, there’s something sharp and big inside her that won’t let her slump over. She straightens her back instead, and looks at him.

“I want to break up.” 

There are questions flickering across his face in the shape of expressions, too many, she thinks, his mouth is slightly open, while he fails to pick one.

“Why?” He finally manages, without sounding sure of even that one syllabic word.

Why? Because she kissed someone else, who didn’t call her afterwards, and even if that stung it didn’t make Dean seem better, however that’s possible. Because she doesn't want to live with him, she’s not even sure she wants to have lunch with him, she doesn't see a future with him, she doesn't want her life to be like this forever, In fact, she can’t handle her life like this for another day. She kissed someone else. All of those reasons are true, and horribly cruel. She wants to be kind, to make him feel good about it somehow, but, every time she’s tried that tactic in the past it’s just enabled him to twist her sentiment and control when he’s ready to come back, and she’s been ensnared by her own words. She needs to make sure he doesn’t try to convince her otherwise this time, make sure he won’t want to. She takes a breath.

“My life is about to change.” She says. “And I wanna let it.”

It’s kind because it makes it clear that it's about her, not him. It’s cruel because it makes it clear that it’s not about him at all, it has nothing to do with him. Part of her can't believe she just did this, how could this happen without her seeing it coming? He stares at her. Part of her is terrified of his reaction, his eyes, he’s so mad. Inside her soft and small Rory wants to offer some soft and small words, to roll up like a pill bug. But on the surface, she’s still, calm even, ready to change. That’s why it’s going to stick this time. 

Then it catches up with her: prom, the limo, the tux, probably a chilled flower in a box somewhere, maybe a room at Kyle’s house. She swallows. We could still go to prom together. The words almost stumble out her mouth but she stops them, holds them in, clenches her teeth around them. She holds him in her gaze and waits for him to fold. 

And finally he does, he makes a sound she can’t identify, gestures vividly and glares at her with such hatred that she has to force herself not to twitch as it hits her. Then he turns and ambles the other way, in the vague direction of his house. 

She waits until she’s lost sight of him before taking a shaky breath. When she exhales tears run down her cheeks, and her breath comes out in spasms that she for the life of her can’t place as either crying or laughter. It hurts, but the pain she’s feeling, part relief, part empathy, part loss, is probably a few sizes smaller than the kind Wesley talked about.

_June_

Prom arrives and she goes with Lane, and Dave. It’s unclear who the third wheel is. Without Dean’s money there is no limo, and they end up walking to the locale, since Rory refuses to drive Dean’s car. Lane and Dave are super classy about it obviously. It probably helps that they are deliriously in love, and that Rory has tried compensating for her wrecking their plans at the last minute by convincing Mrs Kim to let Lane sleep at her place, expanding her curfew some, and guaranteeing that she gets to have her cheek pecked goodnight. Luckily it’s not a long walk, but still, Rory’s grateful they are her friends. They walk a few steps behind her, hand in hand, marvelling at early summer. Rory's chest aches, but she can still breathe easily.

When they arrive she looks around for Dean at first, nervous, but he doesn’t show, and a friend of his informs her, rather pointedly, that a bunch of them are skipping prom for the comfort of Kyle’s living room.

The food is boring, the place tacky and the music top forty, but Lane is there, they are there together, like they planned. Dave has taken it upon himself to make sure both girls are happy and goofs off with Zack and Brian, and Rory allows it to work and smiles until her mouth aches. Then Lane is swept off to dance with her partner, and Rory dances with Brian, then Zack, even if the guy is all hands. Then she and Lane dance together until the sugar from the punch wears off. The songs get slower and it nears the whole announcing prom king and queen thing. Odds seem to favor Lindsey Lester and her boyfriend and Lindsey’s nice, but Rory hasn’t talked to her in years, so she excuses herself and heads for the parking lot, doesn’t even bother with the veranda, it’ll be full of couples. Turns out the parking lot is only slightly better in this respect. She winds up standing by the side of the road, right next to the sign, looking at the darkening sky, listening to the distant music, feeling free falling. Steps approach and seconds later Lane puts her arm around her.

“I can’t believe you broke up with him.” She sighs, shaking her head. “Before prom. You’re not supposed to do that.”

Rory laughs helplessly.

“Didn’t you read the instruction manual?” Lane shakes her a bit with each syllable.

“I think it might be more complicated than that.” Rory admits. “Love, I mean.”

Lane sighs wistfully.

“You get to have complicated feelings about your ex-boyfriend, that’s so cool, you’re my idol.”

Rory laughs harder, happy.

“We’re finally here.” Lane whispers.

“Yeah.”

“God it’s boring.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll go get Dave and we’ll go.”

They walk back, Dave and Lane dance across the road singing. Rory walks behind them and sings along, just ‘cause she wants to. They get home, and Rory lets Dave and Lane have the porch for a good half hour, while Lorelai calls Mrs Kim telling her the girls are back and in bed. Lorelai sits down at the kitchen table with Rory while they wait for Lane and Dave to finish with their canoodling. Rory kicks off her shoes and groans.

“Why didn’t you drive?” Lorelai asks.

Rory sighs.

“It didn’t feel right using it.”

“The car?”

“Yeah. What do I do with it?”

“Keep it.”

“But it’s an entire car.”

“You think it’ll make him feel better if you give it back?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe it will, but mostly I think it’ll make you feel better.“

“But, what do I do with it?” Rory tries again.

“Use it. It’s real. It happened. Consider it a mark on your bedpost.”

“Ew.”

“A spoil of war, then. A reminder.”

“A reminder.” Rory repeats.

Lorelai nods.

“Who do you think needs it more? You or him?”

Rory just nods. 

Lane joins them, and a while later they really do turn in. In spite of that it’s almost light out when Rory falls asleep. She lies there thinking, before finally coming to rest on this; It was just a day, but an important one. She can’t let resentment ruin the memory of it. It was real to her, and true. That’s what matters.


	3. A Tale of Two Mothers

_September_

The apartment is already baking when Liz Danes wakes up, and she’s drained from it. She would have preferred wasting her limited energy on making her way to the park, claiming a spot in the shade with her magazines and her sketchpad, where she puts the ideas for her jewelry. You have to get there early on days like these otherwise they all go. But alas, she promised Jess, and AA are pretty specific about commitments, building trust, at any offered opportunity, and god knows they are few and far between these days. Ever since Jess left. She swallows the feeling and gets up. She packs her tote bag with her things anyway, hoping karma will provide. Then she heads for the coffee shop.

She’s crazy about New York City, but she’s starting to wonder if it’s a healthy relationship. It’s late summer, technically September, but the city doesn’t acknowledge that in the slightest, and it means business. The buildings block the wind and trap the heat, multiplying it in thousands and thousands of reflections cast from glass, metal and polished stone, laying it to rest in the asphalt finally. It was easier back when she was drinking; She’d just sleep through the summer days and do all her best and worst work in the evenings. The city’s also significantly lonelier since she’s been on the wagon, slimmer pickings; She’s been forced to realise that the reason she hasn’t really missed being close to one singular specific someone through the years, might be because she’s had so many others to hang out with. And since Jess left... 

She turns the corner and arrives at Gloria’s. This time of day the only thing protecting the place from direct sunlight are the worn blinds so the lanky tables at the sidewalk are empty. The air conditioner in the place is old, it drips and makes a constant wheezy noise but it’s still better than the street outside. Liz stops just inside the door and makes a content sound as the cool air dries her off. 

“Liz!”

She opens her eyes. Gloria herself is behind the counter, smiling, and Liz makes her way over to her. Most tables are taken, and she recognizes a couple of people from the neighborhood and says hello. Gloria comes out and gives her a hug. They’ve known each other for a couple of years, since about three boyfriends back; She and Jess had just moved here, and Gloria opened the place up around the same time. They bonded over music, and later sobriety. They don’t go to the same meetings though, Gloria lives in Brooklyn and was already in the program when they met.

“What can I get ya?”

“I’m just here for his last check.” Liz replies. “Although, I wouldn’t say no to some iced coffee.”

“Got it.” 

Gloria gets behind the counter and starts on the coffee.

“How have you been?” She asks. “How’s the jewelry enterprise going?”

They haven’t seen each other for a while, Gloria has family out of town and Liz has just been busy. She sits down next to the counter and starts talking.

“It’s going great to be honest.” 

It is. It’s strange to say it though, because the words seem like a lie from being spoken about her endless string of failed previous projects so often. She keeps speaking though, owning your success stories is important too.

“My shop on ebay was kind of slow and someone suggested I try the fairs. So I signed up for a county fair in PA, they did not like me there.” She chuckles at the memory because of what comes next. “I was about to give up and go home but I had already booked a booth at a ren fair in Vermont-”

Gloria laughs, and rattles the shaker, and Liz raises her voice to be heard.

“-And let me tell you; They loved me! Sold out all the stuff I brought in half a day.”

“Congratulations!”

“Yeah, so now I’ve booked every other fair of that kind I could find at a reasonable distance, I’m designing a line specifically inspired by the historical stuff too.”

“Wow.” Gloria pours her coffee into a take away cup and slides it across the counter placing it in front of her. Liz takes a gulp. 

“How have you been?” She asks. “How’s business?”

“Busy.” Gloria answers, a tad curtly.

She reaches behind the counter and retrieves an envelope handing it to Liz.

“He earned it.” Gloria pours a cup of coffee for herself too. “Wished he would’ve given me some notice though. I coulda used him, the summer has been crazy.”

Liz shrugs.

“I don’t know what to tell ya.” She says, leaning on the counter. “One day he just went back to school.” 

“Really?”

Liz studies the envelope. It’s been laying around for a while, the corners are creased and there’s a coffee stain on it, right next to his name. She taps a finger on it, while answering Gloria.

“Found him doing homework the same night,” she laughs at the memory, “I was afraid to ask, knowing me I’d probably ruin the whole thing!” The ache sneaks into her voice shaking it slightly before she clears her throat. “So, I just stayed out of his way. He graduated and everything.” She shakes her head, still in disbelief, and takes another sip. “Not for nothing though I tell ya.”

“What happened?”

Liz doesn’t like this part, but it’s kind of needed for the explanation to work. She leans in and lowers her voice, still careful to keep it light, humorous.

“About three weeks before graduation Jimmy shows up.”

“His dad, right?”

“The very same. I don’t know, he was going through some existential crisis, insisted on seeing Jess, but I insisted right back; kid’s finally getting his life together, got no right putting your shit in the way of that.” 

“What did you do?”

“Told him he had to wait ‘til after graduation.” She sips her coffee.

“And?” 

“And he held up in a motel room for about a week, before, I don’t know, giving up, losing patience, having second thoughts, and heading back to where he came from.” Liz takes another sip and braces herself, forcing hard humor into her voice. “Jess graduates, I tell him about it, he loses it, packs a duffel bag and heads off into the sunset after his daddy.”

Liz wants to rail on Jimmy harder for being a non-existing father to Jess, but he walked out on her too, and she’s never quite been able to distinguish between her personal and her maternal resentment. Not that it has mattered before, she’s talked plenty of shit about Jimmy over the years, but in her present circumstances she’s no longer allowed to blame him for everything that has gone wrong in her life since he left. She misses that, having a surefire scapegoat. 

Gloria solemnly shakes her head.

“Men.”

“A week ago, I get the call to wire him money. Probably took him that long to figure out Jimmy and Jimmy failing his test.”

That’s something to feel good about, but she’s pretty sure he hasn’t forgiven her for… anything. At least not yet. To be fair, she hasn’t apologized properly either, before he left she couldn’t work up the nerve; The two of them can’t talk about anything without it escalating into everything. And since he left she’s only had him on the phone about three times, and saying she‘s sorry has felt a bit like shouting into the void.

“So, what now? Is he setting up shop in California?”

“I doubt it.” But she doesn’t know, of course. “I tried to tell him before he went, even back when he was a kid and all snowed in on Allen Ginsberg: you’re gonna hate it there, nothing but sun and outgoing people. My guess, he’s making his way back home, but who could tell with that kid, honestly?”

Gloria smiles, knowingly, she’s spent enough time with Jess too.

“He is an enigma.”

Liz sighs, lost in thought for a moment.

“At least he graduated.” She says. “If someone had told me a year ago that was an option I would’ve laughed in their face.”

Gloria nods, pats Liz’s hand.

“It’s all the way it should be. I get it, and you tell him so when you see him.”

Liz swallows, looks away. 

“Sure.” She says hoarsely.

Gloria goes on.

“But he never even came back for his books.”

Liz gestures dismissively.

“Keep ‘em.”

Gloria nails her with a glare.

“I do not want to keep them. As if I need the extra ones!” She gestures at her crowded bookshelves, exasperated, then walks around the counter and points to a bag by the door. “I packed them up, take ‘em with ya will ya?”

Liz walks over to the bag and peeks inside.

“These are all his?” She whines.

“I might have put in some extra.” Gloria admits.

“Gloria! I don’t have the shelf space for it.”

“And I do? Take it, and I’ll include his tips despite him running out on me.” She sing-songs.

Liz sighs. Drag that thing around all day? Then she thinks about Jess’s voice on the phone.

“Fine.” She lifts the bag with a grunt and accepts the extra cash from Gloria.

Under other circumstances, not that she can pinpoint which but still, she would’ve tried to savor the buzz from the social interaction, the venting. She can’t today, something’s missing, and she is annoyed from the weight of the bag, the heat, the distance to the bank, the line inside. She’s there for at least twenty minutes, shivering from the cranked up air conditioner. Finally she wires Jess his paycheck, but the teller is a piece of work and she’s tired leaving there. In an effort to feel better she heads for the park, but by the time she gets there it’s as she predicted, all the good spots are taken. So much for karma. She stomps her foot, doesn’t have it in her to go somewhere else, especially not with this stupid bag. She decides to go home, she’s behind on her manufacturing anyway. 

The way seems much further when dragging an entire library and by the time she reaches her street she’s in familiar pain, and sweating profusely, mumbling profanities. She wants nothing more than to get inside, have an aspirin - the only painkiller she’s allowed these days, and jump in the shower, but she halts when she sees her door. 

There is someone waiting there, someone she knows. She sighs. TJ. She met him in Vermont and they had some fun and now he won’t stop calling. This is what it’s come to? Stalking? She clenches her jaws and forces a smile while approaching the door. His gaze darts up and down the street and sticks on her.

“Lady Elizabeth!” He shouts in greeting.

She can’t help the impulse to smile, but she can fight it. She presses her lips together, holding it in place.

“It’s Liz, Gary.” She hoots in response.

TJ laughs. She reaches her door. He wags his finger at her.

“I see what you did there.”

“It is nice to be seen.” She lightly admits, when stopping in front of him. “Can I help you with something?”

“I’ve been trying to call you, and I kept getting your machine, so I left messages and never heard back, I started to worry. A lady living alone, you know-”

“I don’t live alone.” She says, rather tightly.

Her irritation spikes, when they met at the fair she was high on success, which apparently made him tolerable. 

“That’s right, your son, but, you told me he was roadtrippin’ or somethin’, he never picked up when I called, I figured…” He trails off and starts to look as sheepish as he is. “I wanted to make sure you were okay.” He finishes.

No one has ever waited at her door to make sure she was okay, not even with ulterior motives. It’s unnerving is what it is. Annoyance turns to exasperation.

“And now you have.” She says, sunnily. “Thanks TJ.” 

“No problem.” He says, apparently pleased with himself again.

She turns her attention to her keychain, but he keeps standing there. She nods at him and attempts to open the door. It’s difficult getting out the right key while carrying two bags. And time seems to creep with his attention like a haunting on her. She can’t put anything down, as TJ will no doubt see it as an invitation. 

After at least half a minute of struggling to get the key into the lock, it’s clear he doesn’t heed to such subtleties anyway; He promptly reaches for the bag of books and takes it from her. She curses to herself, but mumbles a thank you, and finally manages to get the door open. She makes an attempt to take the bag back from him but he holds it out of her reach.

“No way! You’re not carrying this all the way up there. You have a bad back, remember?”

She blinks at the reminder. She told him about that, huh? Probably built into some rant on how crappy non-opiate painkillers are. She briefly considers just leaving him with the bag, or offering it to him as a parting gift, but she doubts he’s the kind of guy that would have any use for a bag of books. So she starts climbing the stairs with TJ shuffling on behind her. 

She unlocks her apartment and goes inside. TJ follows with the bag. She drops her tote bag and turns to him, stiff smile on her face. He walks right in, past her, and looks around, genuine curiosity on his face.

“Nice place you got here.”

It’s not. It’s a mess. The kitchen is swamped by dirty dishes, breadcrumbs are spread across the table, and it smells vaguely of trash, as always in the summertime, the living room has a crowded workstation, covered in material and surrounded by paper clippings, as well as left overs from her jewelry, the rest of the space is taken up by her unmade bed, as Jess has the separate bedroom. She squints at TJ to discover a hint of sarcasm or malice, but finds none.

He’s looking to hook up again, that’s what this has to be, and boy, did he pick a bad time for it. The cogs in her head start turning, churning out some excuse, a turn down that’ll work, but she is interrupted by his voice.

“Where do you want-?” He hints at the bag.

“Oh, here.” She steps across the hall and pushes the door to Jess’s room open.

There are boxes of material for her jewelry placed around the entrance, apart from that, it’s the best kept space in the entire apartment. Jess left it in a mess but she has since cleaned up, washed the bed linen, the dirty clothes, made the bed, cleared the surfaces, while waiting for- she swallows. She just wants a shower, a nap.

TJ steps inside the room, and looks around. 

“Anywhere?” TJ asks.

She blinks.

“Yes, anywhere is fine.”

He puts the bag on top of one of the boxes, takes another look around the room and steps back out into the hall. She reaches and pulls the door shut behind him.

“That your boy’s room?” He asks.

Her boy, her child. She can’t answer with words, so she just nods.

“He sure is tidy.” TJ remarks.

A sob makes its way out of Liz, even if she tries to stop it. She hasn’t cried in ages, and she remembers the night Jess came back, almost two years ago. How he looked; angry and vulnerable, and how she lost it, just lost it. 

She had been paralyzed by fear for days, part of her convinced he was dead. But he showed, and she threw her arms around him and held him until she lost track of time, and he let her, maybe he needed it too, she never knows for sure with him. And she swore things were going to get better, made him promise to stay. She went to her first AA meeting the next day. 

She’s been sober since, but feels like she’s never stopped being paralyzed, stuck on step four. She made a searching but fearful moral inventory of herself and has wanted to say she’s sorry. Unfortunately she and Jess still can’t talk for shit, the two of them can’t talk about anything without it escalating into everything. All she could do was hold onto him, to sobriety for dear life. 

Her sponsor’s been trying to talk her through it, down from it, she supposes, telling her that this vice like grip she has on the situation is no good, this convulsive, forceful sobriety, but the truth is Liz knows there is no apologizing, no making amends unless Jess wants it from her. And now he’s gone, again. 

She hasn’t cried in ages, and never in front of a man, what would be the point in that? And here she is breaking down in front of a basic stranger, a man who it’s imperative she stays strong in front of so that he doesn’t decide she needs saving. Needing people, people needing you, it all ends the same way. She tries choking her sobs, like she’s putting out a fire.

TJ looks at her, dumbstruck for a few moments. Then he straightens his back.

“You want chili?” He says.

She frowns and her sobs turn into confused panting.

“What?” She sniffles.

He fixes her with a stare.

“I make a mean chili.”

Liz drags her hands over her face, while her breath slows, trying to pull herself together and decide what to make of TJ’s proposal. He makes the decision before she gets the chance. 

“I’m making you some chili.” He establishes, and heads for the kitchen.

Liz remains in the hallway, still too taken to react. TJ starts in on the kitchen, clanking the pots and pans and looking through her cupboard, her refrigerator. She revises her mild assessment of him as a stranger to possibly the most meddling man she’s ever met, save her brother. 

Back when her brother still meddled that is. She let him down one too many times and when she finally got sober he was skeptical to say the least. She tried to leave it, to gather enough time as evidence that it was real, but panicked when Jimmy showed and called Luke for advice, that was the last time they spoke directly. She’s left a few messages for him since then, sent a postcard from the fair in Vermont, but has actively avoided actually talking with him. Because Jess left. Luke’s not known for his bedside manner or his motivational speeches, and she’s still too chaotic to tell which her triggers are; He’s gotten her out of more than a few jams, but interacting with him has also prefaced a worrisome number of benders. 

“You mind taking out the trash?” Comes TJ’s voice from the kitchen.

She shakes her head in disbelief. This ultimately has to be about hooking up, right? Apparently he doesn’t mind detours. He is so not her type. But her type hasn’t really been working for her, ever. Since her father died she’s been all about the distant and aloof with an unfortunately high percentage of bad guys. 

She steps into the bathroom but leaves the door open to keep an ear on the kitchen, where a stranger is cooking for her. She blows her nose and looks in the mirror. She’s not crying anymore, that’s something.

There’s a kind of freedom that comes along with being with someone who doesn’t care about you, existing in a kind of skip zone. And it has ruined her life. It has convinced her that nothing she does matters, when at least one person in her life has been dependent on everything she does. The one person she should have protected. How do you even start trying to fix something like that? One day at a time, is what her sponsor would say.

TJ hoots from the kitchen again:

“And we need Paprika.”

We. Like that’s what they are. She washes her hands and heads for the kitchen. One meal at a time.

_November_

It’s autumn in New York and Liz is in love. Not like any sort of love she’s felt before. She knows that’s a thing people say, and even feel, because, how could any love really be the same when it’s experienced for, and with, different people? But this time it’s a new kind of man she’s with. TJ is not the sharpest tool in the shed, to put it mildly. But he is kind. Kind. It’s the strangest thing how everything seems so easy to forgive when a person is kind. She is pretty dumb too, how could she not have figured this out sooner? They’ve visited a couple of more Ren Fairs together, and he stays at her place a lot. 

Not today though, because today Luke is coming to visit.

She cleaned the apartment, gathered all the junk off of the workstation, made her bed, vacuumed and did the dishes, she even dusted the prisms hanging in her windows and bought flowers. She put all the loose stuff into Jess’s room, and it looked so crowded she almost got stuck clearing out excess stuff from there too, but stopped after filling a couple of bags with books, reminding herself that she was supposed to make dinner. 

She’s cooking from scratch, rare, but TJ’s rubbed off on her, and she’s working on her own version of chili sin carne. Part of her still feels stupid for doing any of this, inviting judgement from her grumpy brother, but it’s all part of what’s been brewing since she met TJ, or possibly before that, when she made that promise to Jess; She wants Luke to see her well and wants him to approve, and admitting that is important. She thought about including TJ, but landed on it being too much for Luke. One day, one meal at a time. 

Luke arrives and seems immune to her enthusiasm as usual. It doesn’t bother her. A lot. He shows his feelings in actions. And the fact that he showed up means something. He grunts a greeting and hangs his coat on the hallstand mumbling something about it being unsteady and that he should have brought his tool box. He’s been this way since they were kids. Okay, maybe he’s getting a little bit worse every time they see each other, but that’s partly to be expected with age. She hands him a light beer, no reason to deny him.

“You cooked? What’s the occasion?” 

He looks suspicious more than anything. Shit.

“Your birthday, silly.” Liz fibs, like a master.

“Huh.”

They eat, but it seems TJ’s praise of her dish has been filtered through the tastebuds of love; Luke takes a few bites, then shuffles around the leftovers while attempting and failing to do small talk. He starts to fidget in his seat and she has to speak her peace before he figures out some excuse to leave.

It’s been years since there was any joy and fun in their relationship. There used to be. As teenagers they were hell on wheels in Stars Hollow, partners in crime and confidants. But then they lost dad, parts of themselves and eventually each other. He clinged to the past, while she ignored it as best she could, with time, distance and intoxication. She never meant to distance herself from him, her brother, he’s one of the few constant people in her life, but she has issues with permanence. 

For years her motto has been to roll with the changes, but the more time that’s passed the more she’s seen that even changes seem to stay the same, that is, be the same kind of changes she’s seen a thousand times before. And now, there’s TJ, and her staying in the same spot so that Jess will know where to go when he’s ready. She has to stop, turn and face the people she wants to keep.

“So,” she starts, wildly uncomfortable, “I’ve met someone.”

He stifles a sigh and puts down his cutlery.

“Jeez, Liz, if this is meant to be some pitch for your latest dealer-”

No one said it would be easy, though.

“I’ve been sober for two years.” She says, as calmly as she can.

He nods quickly, clearly not believing her,

“How is Jess doing?” He says, sharply. “Still on the road, or under the influence of Jimmy ‘the winner’ Mariano? Do you know?”

Liz swallows her disappointment.

“He checks in with me now and again.” She answers. “Last time about three weeks ago, he’s back east, Philadelphia, apparently living with a couple of guys he met in California.”

“That’s it?”

She gets up and clears the table, for something to do besides getting upset.

“What do you want me to do?” She tries to keep her tone light. “He’s eighteen, nineteen really.”

“Fine,” not actually fine, judging by his sigh, “you know, let’s just change the subject.”

“Fine.”

Liz puts on the teakettle and moves her chair over to the window and opens it. She lights a cigarette. Luke hates her smoking, but she hasn’t been able to quit.

“How about you, are you seeing someone?” She starts, maybe she should’ve asked him to begin with.

He actually laughs, a sharp, dry sound.

“Please.”

Maybe not. She smiles.

“That’s a no I guess.”

“Correct. What?” He asks when she averts her gaze.

She sighs.

“Nothing. Peace be with you, just-”

She falls quiet and looks at him.

“Are you about to give me life advice?” He says. “This should be good.” 

He crosses his arms and wiggles into his chair looking back at her, mocking expression on his face. She takes a drag on her cigarette and his patience runs out, he’s never been able to play poker worth a damn. 

“Just what?” He asks.

She shrugs.

“Just, how do you grow in any direction without the influence of other people? Everything alive grows.” She lets the cigarette rest in the ashtray and pours tea water for herself. “If you’re anything like me-”

“But I’m nothing like you.” 

She twitches at the willful edge in his voice, but thinks she conceals it pretty well.

“You’re hiding.” She mumbles.

“How do you get off telling me-?” He starts. 

She immediately tunes it out, at least partly. She focuses on preparing her tea instead. He sounds angry, but it’s like he wants to be, just like Jess, like he’s looking for excuses. Like he needs to be because that’s the only way he can- She exhales, purposefully, turns and gestures with her free hand.

“Just because I’ve been wrong a lot doesn’t mean I always am.” She talks slowly, to not escalate. “And just because you won’t take advice from me doesn’t mean I don't have some good ones to offer.”

“Oh, I’m sure.”

She sits back down in the window and picks her cigarette back up, tapping the ash off.

“You’ll see. When you meet my guy. Or when you work up the courage to put yourself out there.”

“Well, you’d know all about out there.”

She just smiles and breathes through it, his response is hardly unexpected. But even a mountain gets struck by lightning, or erupts. For now, it’ll have to be enough that he’s here. And he does stay, he has another beer, shares some gossip from the town and she smokes another cigarette, drinks her tea. 

“You know…” She starts, straight out of the silence. “I was so close to sending him your way. Jess.” She clarifies. “Couple of years back.”

“Really?” His tone is not what she expects, it’s… curious.

“One of his buddies got arrested, he barely attended school, was out all hours of the night, never a kind word.” She shakes her head. “From either of us,” she adds.

Luke just looks at her.

“I must have been high, but whenever I thought about you I just… imagined dad in your place.” She breathes a smokey, silent laugh. “If anyone could sort him out it’d be dad, right?”

It’s an offering of sorts, an homage to William Danes, the soft core where she and Luke melds, embracing each other, still, guaranteed to create common ground. And it works; Luke smiles.

“I don’t know, Liz. I think the only one who can sort out Jess is Jess, at this point.” It’s a kindness, what he says. “I would’ve tried though, had it come to that.”

“I know.”

“Why didn’t it?”

She looks at him, baffled. He’s not opposed to the idea, but intrigued. She thinks of the night Jess came back. It’s a familiar memory, she’s used it a lot, to stay sober, to hold herself together, with force when necessary. It’s edges are smooth, worn from being touched, filed down, changed, she knows that, the only thing that’s still there is the relief from holding him, from him being alive. She smiles.

“I decided I wanted to keep him.” She takes a last drag. “Turned out to be too late for any of that, for us. He stayed, but…” She shrugs, and puts out the cigarette. 

Luke nods, and they fall back into silence.

He’s halfway out the door a half hour later when she remembers. She runs into Jess’s room and grabs a bag of books.

“Take these off my hands wouldya?” She says.

“You’re moving the kid out without his knowledge?” Luke frowns.

“I’m just trying to make the space habitable.” She objects. “I want it to look nice when he comes back, and he’s practically weeded these out himself, and it’s not like I’m throwing them away, I’m giving them to you, and-”

He raises his hands.

“Okay, okay.” He looks in the bag. “Not that I’d know what to do with books.”

She smiles.

“You’ll think of something, big brother.”

He smiles back, shakes his head.

“Yeah, yeah.” He stops mid-motion. “Liz, I-” He bites his lip. “I don’t think it’s too late, for you and Jess, it might be a long road, but-” He falls quiet and tries to convey the rest with a look.

“Yeah.” She smiles tenderly at him. “Thanks.”

Luke’s hand closes tightly around the bag, there’s a pause, his knuckles go a bit white.

“And as long as your new guy isn’t anything like-” He raises his voice some, it goes sharp, cautionary.

Liz straightens her back, interrupts him.

“I haven’t dated anyone like that in a long time, Luke.”

He nods, and puts an awkward arm around her in what constitutes a hug. Then he leaves, and she sits for a while longer by the window, and tries to be okay with just being okay. Okay is a lot better than the mere possibility of great, she just has to get used to that.

_February_

Lorelai Gilmore is the last to leave the Inn, just like the day before, and the day before that, the Inn in progress. She locks the door and hurries. It’s late. Luke will close any minute. She picks up her pace. She’s so tired the word nowhere cuts it anymore and she should really be heading home, but it seems she hasn’t seen a friendly face in forever. 

She hasn’t been at Jason’s for two weeks and even when they see each other they can’t get through one conversation without multiple interruptions from their phones. She and Rory are basically only able to see each other on Friday Nights and her daughter hasn’t been to the house for weeks. And Sookie is busy with Davey. Lorelai’s working under the assumption that this is only temporary, and knows it’ll get better, but still, there’s no comprehensible end in sight.

It’s her own doing, no use pretending otherwise. The Dragonfly is important, but it’s not just that. It’s not enough for her to be kept busy. She’s doing plenty of keeping herself that way too.

Thank god for Luke. He’s just been such a mensch lately, with the money, and the earrings, and the support, and before... always really. Her chest aches thinking about it, a good ache, that makes her hurry even more. 

She comes around the corner but the closed-sign is turned outward. She curses and winds up a bit out of breath, leaning her forehead onto the glass of the door with a light thud. There’s rattle as the blinds are turned and she’s face to face with Luke, in the middle of locking up. She smiles through the glass, he sighs, and opens the door for her. An impulse almost has her walking into his arms. Jeez. She must be more than a little frayed around the edges. She focuses on moving her feet, walks inside and he closes and locks the door behind her. The space looks tidier than usual, it unnerves her a bit, it means he’s had time to give the place a little spruce since she was last here, and she didn’t know about it. She doesn’t like not knowing. Maybe Rory’s right about her turning into miss Patty, or Babette.

He glances at the watch and back to her.

“You’re just now getting off work?” 

His tone is accusing, and she smiles at it. Nobody is being aggressive about her self-care like him these days.

“My to-do list is on an exponential curve.”

“I’ve no doubt. Some ill-informed coffee?”

“Please.”

She sits at the counter, he puts out a cup and pours the coffee. She takes a sip. How is it better than every cup she’s had all day? Better than her first one in the morning, even the one saving her from falling asleep mid work in the afternoon, and this coffee has probably been sitting in that pot for a while. It’s a mystery. She looks at him, and tries to convey her pleasure with her mouth full. He chuckles, and punches out the register, squints at the daily and counts the money. She watches him, blissfully blank inside. Maybe it’s just his business she likes knowing. Another sip of coffee and maybe she doesn’t need to know anything. She smiles to herself as a stray thought comes upon her, but not for the first time; How much of their relationship builds on the coffee? How much has he merged with it and affected the way she feels about him? And does it matter? As friends they are an unlikely match. His brand of grumpiness in anyone else would be off putting, and he might act like he’s annoyed by her, but she knows he’s not really. Most things about them don’t make any sense, which is kind of why she enjoys it, trusts it, even. And that in itself is, pretty weird. She thinks, maybe, when things make sense, you get hung up on the sensemaking, it becomes a kind of crutch.

He smiles at her.

“They look nice on you.”

The earrings. She’s worn them repeatedly since he gave them to her. It’s funny, she has a number of earrings like them, they were right up her alley, but it’s them, that particular pair, she’s worn since then. It’s been a while since she’s been so happy about a gift, and that’s saying something considering what an enthusiastic hoarder she is. 

“Thanks. How is your sister?”

“She’s fine, but, I don’t know, she’s seemed fine before.” He gestures dismissively. “After years of studies I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t tell.”

“Well, she’s obviously found something she’s good at.”

“I can’t really tell that either. But I am happy you like them.”

“Although I’m hardly a baseline for good taste.”

“Well, more people were buying her stuff-”

“Neither is miss Patty, or Babette, or crazy Carrie, or Kirk-”

He glares at her.

“This is you helping?”

“But then again who cares about good taste, as long as you bring home the bacon? Mass appeal, baby! And yes, this is me helping.” She raises the mug to her mouth and speaks into it. “You feel better about her business now, don’t you?”

“Well, more defensive at least, so thanks, I guess.”

“You’re welcome.” She sips her coffee, pleased. 

He smiles at her, shaking his head, and she takes a deep breath. She’s been longing for this. Just the useless banter. She needs Rory or Luke for it these days. Sookie and her are all business at the moment.

He wipes the counter. Her phone rings, and she looks at the screen. Jason. She turns the sound off and lets it go to voicemail.

“That your guy?” Luke asks.

Her eyes widen at him, but she quickly regains her composure.

“We’ve been dating for a few months now.” She admits.

“I figured there was someone in the picture.”

“You did? How?” 

“Just clues. You know, you never dressed weather-appropriate, that kind of thing.”

She has to laugh. 

“That implies I normally do.”

“It does, doesn’t it? Well, maybe there were other signs too.”

She’s not the only one listening to his conversations, he does it to her too, looks at her for clues. Clues, like he’s a detective and she’s a case.

“Oh really? What might those be?”

“You’re-” He starts, but trails off.

“I’m what?”

“You’re softer, when you’re with someone.”

“I am?” She’s not sure how she’s feeling about that sentiment.

“Not in general, just…” He’s quiet again.

“Just what?”

“Just around me, I think.” 

He makes eye contact for a few seconds before looking away. Huh. She hadn’t thought about it herself, but maybe, no, she definitely is, for whatever reason.

He chuckles.

“You usually never back out of a whatever, but when you’re with someone…” He clears his throat. “Anyway, was that him?” He gestures at her phone.

She shrugs.

“I’ll catch him later.”

She doesn’t like to talk about her guys with him, never did, but it’s gotten more and more difficult since she dated Alex. And then Babette came gossiping about how Taylor’s lawyer had been very cute and apparently hitting it off with Luke and she started thinking maybe this time he might- But no. And she couldn’t figure out what he was waiting for and it was driving her a little crazy. She’s already buckets of crazy of course, so another little insane process running in the background doesn’t really make that much of a difference. But it’s the strangest thing how she can be annoyed about his refusal to date, especially considering she remembers Rachel and what it felt like when she was around. 

“You’re quiet tonight-” He remarks, accurately.

She taps the side of her head with her index finger.

”Not in here.”

He tilts his head.

”You need to rest.”

”Yeah, yeah.”

He sighs, she can’t help herself.

”Hey, you should change the name of this place to Jude’s Diner.”

He squints at her. 

”Patron saint of lost causes.” She clarifies, pleased with her own wittiness.

But his smile is tight in response. She feels bad.

“You know, she could be okay. Your sister.” She tries. “Just because it’s been bad before doesn’t mean it can’t get better.”

He takes a slow breath before responding.

“I guess.”

“Maybe it hasn’t worked out in her favor so far but- When I met her, she seemed to have the right ideas.”

“Which are?”

“To keep trying.”

Now who’s the patron saint of whatever? He grunts, and she can’t tell from which emotion, maybe whatever she’s going for here means something different to him than to her, but that’s never stopped her before.

“‘Cause, if you don’t, you’ll know nothing will change in any direction.”

“Well, I like knowing things.”

Her thoughts from before echo in her at his words.

“Even bad things coming?” She says.

“Especially bad things.”

She wasn’t going to start something with Jason. The reason she finally agreed to dating him to begin with, to spite Emily, was just the latest in a long run of dots in the proverbial con-column. She makes lists too, in her head, and then usually ignores them, but lately that con-column has been burning a hole in her, it’s started to feel like it might be turning into an exponential curve too. Jason was, and remains a bad idea. And maybe it’s because she finally has a moment to herself, or that she’s with Luke, sitting still for once, that the insight finally catches up with her. There’s the doing things out of spite, something they seem to have in common, but that she kind of knows isn’t good for building anything on. There’s the separate bedrooms, which shouldn’t be a big deal but still kind of is, even if she can’t put her finger on why. He’s a real person but it feels made up, like some next level dramatic irony. Then there’s the not telling her parents in spite of the spite. She talks a tall game about sticking it to the man, and by the man she usually means Emily Gilmore, and yet she won’t flaunt it. And if the man’s opinion doesn’t matter then why does it irk her that her mother doesn’t like Jason? And him taking Crystal to his functions to fill the hole his secret girlfriend leaves in his life. And said girlfriend feigning jealousy about it. Why does Lorelai Gilmore always insist on so much trouble? Getting into it, causing it, and then keeping it, maintaining it. She raises her voice a little to drown out her own thoughts.

“What about good things?”

They’re not talking about Liz anymore. She feels it, and he does too. Luke sighs, puts down the rag.

“Look. I just- I could jump at any good thing that comes along, and, part of me, a big part of me, wishes I was built that way, maybe I was once, when Liz was around I definitely-” He unties his apron and places it on the counter. ”I was more- open, to suggestion, I guess. But in my experience a chance thing is rarely worth it. Nothing changes-”

“Maybe because you don’t let it change you!”

“And you do, miss as-long-as-everything-is-exactly-how-I-want-it-I’m-totally-flexible?”

She falls into sullen silence. Luke walks around to her side of the counter, and goes on:

“You have a point, okay, and I’m sick of me, and am an inch-” he measures it between his fingers for emphasis, ”-from getting on any train to just have the company of someone other than me, and yet-” He actually sits down next to her. “Lorelai, I just want to want the really good thing. I don’t want to see what happens unless I’m one hundred percent sure that’s the risk I wanna take.”

He has more than one point. 

“I get it.” She pouts. “But incidentally, your company is pretty awesome.”

He smiles, a bit surprised, she thinks.

“Thank you.”

How much has he merged with those things and affected the way she feels about him? But does it matter? In a way he is those things, he chooses to be, and lately that seems necessary to her.

“You are incredibly welcome.”

To live life deliberately. She’s never done that, always just responded to situations, jumped on the opportunities that have presented themselves. She’s not even sure what she would choose if presented with an actual choice anymore. Except, this Inn thing is the only thing she’s ever done for her own sake. Maybe she should try that with relationships too. 

They look at each other in one of their rare silences that always ultimately seem to force her to break them. But not before being so lost in thought staring at him that she only notices the silence when he squints at her. She blushes, and tries to not think about how long they were frozen like that. Is it just her or has that been happening more frequently lately? First in the church when they were sabotaging the stupid bells, and then at the firelight festival. 

She clears her throat, looks for something to talk about and winds up finally giving the place a proper inspection. Some surfaces have received fresh paint jobs, and some items on the shelves have changed places, while others have been sorted out and new ones added. 

“The place looks-” She’s aiming for good, really, but instead she squints at his shelves. “-different. Homey. What’s with the books?” One of the lower shelf spaces is filled with bookends.

Luke turns his head, and follows her gaze.

“How long have they been there?”

He sighs.

“Just a couple of days.”

“Are you starting a book café? A book diner? Or is it more of a transition? Either way that's great!”

“Hold your horses, woman! I had to clear out the apartment-”

“What for? Are you finally fixing the place up? What for?”

“Would you let me answer oh, say, one of your questions?”

“Fine!” She laughs.

“They’ve been gathering dust since my sister forced them on me last fall, and I thought, since they’re of no use to me-”

Lorelai slides off her chair and walks up to the shelf, coffee cup still firmly in her grip. She leans over to look closer at the words printed on a piece of masking tape.

“Oh, you’re charging a dollar per book! Bargain!”

“Well, you should see them on the inside, all dog ears and scribbles in the margins, plus a few of them appear to be stolen.”

She straightens her back and points a finger at him.

“You’re fencing ‘em!”

“Or you could trade if you bring your own.” Luke finishes, unfaced by her accusation.

“Seems I was wrong about you Luke Danes, you do try new things!”

“And am already regretting it.” He mutters.

She tilts her head.

“What brought this on?”

“Liz was here, her guy too, and after they went back to New York I just felt an overwhelming urge to clean.”

She snorts.

“He wasn’t that bad!”

Luke gives her a look.

“Anyway I had boxes and bags of stuff that were just standing there. Some I threw out some I repacked, some I put down here.”

She nods.

“They do look nice. But books though… It’s a bit unexpected.”

He shrugs.

“Maybe Rory’s rubbed off on me.”

“That’s cute.” Lorelai runs her finger over the bookends reading the titles. “There are some great books here. And not one of them is on Trout fishing.” She pulls one out and holds it towards Luke. “Please kill me! That is a cool book.” She turns back to the shelf. “Oh, and Howl, Rory would love this, she probably has, what, two copies already, but she might need another in case she loses ‘em.” 

“Take ‘em.”

She gapes at him.

“I can’t!”

“Of course you can. In fact I know you will.” He disappears behind the counter and returns with a bag which he heaves the books into. “Take ‘em off my hands, take ‘em home, read ‘em, give ‘em to Rory.”

He hands her the bag, and she jerks at the weight and enhances the movement for dramatic effect. 

“You know a real gentleman would help me carry-”

He turns his back before she can finish the sentence.

“Get your coat.”

He locks up and they walk, she skips a little, not sure from what, the coffee, the company. The town is still winter lit, and there’s something in the air that might have been there for days without her having the time to notice, a vague promise of a last round of snow. Miss Patty passes on the other side of the street and waves at them. Lorelai returns it, and Luke nods at her. She glances at him while they walk. He carries her bags, fixes her house, supplies her with food, coffee, consistency to a fault. It’s easy to see why he is important to her. The other way around though. She brings nothing to the table, so it’s harder to figure out what he needs her for. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s that simple. Lorelai glances over her shoulder a last time and sees Miss Patty looking after them before crossing the street heading for the studio. Her and Babette have gossiped plenty over the years. And there was that lawyer he never went out with. Waiting for something.

They arrive at the house and enter it. She walks straight in turning on the monkey lamp. He stands in her hallway.

“Where do you want ‘em?”

“Rory’s room.”

He walks in there and puts the bag among the boxes that are piling up around the edges of the room. The space is increasingly used as storage for all things the Dragonfly. She feels better the more crowded it gets for some reason. Luke looks around.

“You need help-?” He starts.

She smiles and he stops talking.

“No use. It’s gonna get worse in here before it gets better.”

“Well then.” He says.

“I’m gonna fix it up, once the Dragonfly opens, so that it’s nice again, like before-”

He’s quiet, just looks at her, while it all catches up with her, how everything in her life is compartmentalized these days. One time, one space for each person, thing, and how unreal it makes her feel. She’s been so busy, all year really, she hasn’t had the time to think about the fact that Rory doesn’t live here anymore. 

She has to break up with Jason. She likes him a lot, but that’s it. Her family can’t know about them, but it doesn’t give them that forbidden fruity flavor she was hoping for, it’s like if Romeo asked Juliet out and she responded ‘Okay, sure, whatever’. She doesn’t run to him for anything except a good time, doesn’t share anything with him. And it makes her lonely. The strongest feeling she has these days is missing Rory. That is, however, pretty strong.

“Who knew college would be so time consuming?” She adds, jokingly, but it falls kind of flat.

He hugs her, just like that, she almost starts crying from the relief. She stands there, unable to break away from it, is overwhelmed by feeling so tender, all of a sudden, like anything could break her. She’s struck by how rare it is for him to touch her when she’s not grasping at straws. And how nice it is to experience it when you’re not busy bawling your eyes out over one thing or another. He smells nice, feels nice, big and warm. 

There’s a moment, in a hug, when the pressure you can apply and increase reaches critical mass and you have to stop, stay still inside it, and once that happens, it’s like a countdown of how comfortable you are with the person, how intimate you are, or how intimate you can get. Strange how releasing that pressure can somehow feel, difficult, even a little dangerous. She clears her throat when backing away, to cover anything else, and he backs out of the room, while excusing himself. She follows and holds back words for a change. She wants to ask him to stay, to watch a movie. But knows, somehow, that she shouldn’t. Not now.

After he’s gone, she sits down and writes a list, the con list, to have it on paper. Turns out it’s not exponential, but enough, anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know some of you were hoping for another Jess chapter, but alas, you'll have to wait 'til next week.


	4. The Boy

_ April _

Florida during Spring break, what the fuck was he thinking? Probably something about Hemingway. Chris and Eddy were thinking about girls in bikinis, but somehow made it about Hemingway. Ultimately though, Matt and Alex are to blame, they’re the ones actually on Spring Break, Matt from Penn State, and Alex from UPenn, and who insisted they all take it together. None of them even take american lit.

He shouldn’t have come. He can barely afford his share of the gas back to Philadelphia. Usually he works at a diner a few streets north of their apartment, it pays pretty well, which means the steady positions are filled, and he only gets called in when someone gets sick or when there’s a shift nobody else wants. Unfortunately the manager hasn’t had much work to offer lately and Jess is tapped out. 

Alex has parents with money and doesn’t mind spreading the wealth, paying for bunk beds at a hostel, ramen and beer for all of them. Jess has no choice but to accept it but has serious issues with it, which pretty much means he’s been constantly uncomfortable since they got here. All in all this could be the most uncomfortable he’s been since he left New York almost a year ago and that includes his time in California with all that freaking sunshine and all those shiny happy people. Back in Philly he and the guys share an apartment, and interests, similar lives, but here, their differences are highlighted to say the least. Hence, he’s staying in, while the others are out partying.

It’s only their second night here, but he got sick of it one day in. And for good reason. Sure, the girls are cute, but the guys that come with them are assholes to begin with, add a steady stream of alcohol to that and every night is bound to be a disaster waiting to happen; First night and Matt would’ve gotten punched for moving on some big guy’s girl like a drunken idiot, if Jess hadn’t stepped in, and now he is the one with the black eye. It did however get him off the hook for tonight, and he has guilted Matt into being the designated brain.

He’s in his bunk trying to write. California was driving him crazy after a week and he was driving Sasha nuts as a result, so she stuck him in a creative writing class run by one of her pot-smoking friends. The class was as good as could be expected but he’s still written ever since, he needs to now, even if he can’t quite figure out why. And the teacher brought the class to a terrible poetry slam one night where he met Matt. And that’s how it all happened. Matt went back to Philadelphia but called and offered him a place to stay just a week later. Chris and Alex were already living there and Eddy moved in at the beginning of the school year.

The base from the music from the boardwalk outside pounds through the window, a couple is fucking in the room next to him, the walls are made of paper and the bunk beds of creeky metal, the lights buzz in sync with a stubborn mosquito. The tropics, never again. He shouldn’t have come here.

He gives up after a while, gets up, shoving his note book in his jacket pocket, his book in his back pocket and heads out. Well on the street he stops, listens, and moves in the direction he imagines is less noisy. There’s an outdoor mall a few blocks away and he meets a steady stream of people heading in the opposite direction having stocked up on beer, toilet paper and aspirin. The building is painted in turquoise and pink and the matching neon sign blinks with loud, crackling buzzing sounds.

There’s a payphone on the quad and he walks up to it. Then he remains there for a while, in front of it, like it was a person. He counts. How long has it been? At least a month, probably more, he was wearing his winter jacket when he stood by a pay phone like this the last time. He always calls from pay phones, without knowing why, or, he knows the reason he tells himself firmly every time his mind wanders; So she can’t call back, so he can stay in control.

He picks up the receiver and feeds the phone, dials the number. The signals hoots in his ear, one after another, and he feels that familiar sinking inside; Free falling, free to go about his life with a clear conscience if she doesn’t pick up, and at the same time fucking alone, with nothing but the ground rushing up at him. He likes leaving messages on her machine, just saying it’s him, that he’s checking in, offering no number, no information, just a simple I’m alive, after he’s done that he doesn’t have to think of her or the hallway of their- no, her apartment for at least a week. Everytime he calls he hopes she won’t pick up and longs for her to.

“Hello?” Her voice on the other end makes him want to cry.

“It’s me.”

“Jess!” She’s relieved, her breaths audible after his name, like she’s been holding it in.

He is scared to speak, so he just waits, until she’s gotten it together.

“I’m so glad you called.” She says after a few moments. “Are you okay?”

“Yup.”

“Good. Where are you?”

“At some quick mart in Florida.”

There’s a pause as she processes this. He listens for background noises, she sometimes has people over. Lately she’s been talking about one guy, he’s heard him in the background, he sounds like he’s from Jersey. But it doesn’t matter what she says about him, or how he sounds; He’s just another guy.

Now the background is silent, however. The foreground too for that matter. Unusually so. Most often Liz will pick a topic, something boring or stupid that she drags out for as long as his quarters can bear and talks his ear off while he’ll lean on the phone and just listen. Maybe she’s finally giving up on him, on them, maybe he’ll be completely free. Maybe this phone call is all that’s left between him and that. He clears his throat.

“So, basically, I was just calling to check in.”

“I’m getting married.”

He closes his eyes, clenches his jaws.

“Oh.”

“In a few weeks. TJ asked. He’s such a good guy.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I want you there.”

He takes a few slow breaths.

“Uhm, I don’t think I can make the time.” He keeps his voice firm, but light.

Silence. She’s asked him to come home before but immediately accepted all his bullshit excuses as soon as he served them, probably knowing honesty would be worse. Then:

“Why?” 

She’s never questioned him before, and he’s unprepared for it. He still answers automatically.

“I gotta work.” 

“I’ll reimburse you.”

He forces a laugh, mostly to buy time, to think of a better excuse. Or some soft threat that will get her to back off.

“Oh, really, how?”

“I’ll get you a job.”

“Liz-”

“Jess?” The single word, his given name, is an honest question.

He tries to decide what to do. He can lie, make something up, offer practicalities, or rip into her; I don’t want to go to your fucking wedding and watch you marry some asshole again, who’ll keep you broken, unable to even finish a thought, someone who’ll hurt the people around you, or make you do it, or get you drinking again if he hasn’t already. 

Jess bites the inside of his cheek, wishes he had a cigarette.

“You don’t want to come.” That’s not a question.

“Not particularly.” Understatement of the year.

“Please.”

He sighs sharply.

“Look, even if I wanted to I really can’t. I’ll barely make it back to Philly on my dough.” 

No argument to be made there, it’s the truth, he really doesn’t have the money, and he severely doubts he’ll be able to work up the funds in just ‘a few weeks’. Liz breathes on the other end, he listens, thinks about the hallway floor.

“What if I came to get you?”

His heart stops beating, his mother coming to get him.

“You lost your driver’s licence, remember?”

“I could send someone.”

Someone. The new guy, most likely. He feels his pulse hammer against the damaged skin around his eye socket. He hasn’t seen her in a year and can’t help but feel her pull. His throat hurts and he swallows it down. This new guy of hers is most likely a fuck-up, and it’s a long trip, the likelyhood of him actually showing up to collect some wayward kid is slim to none, and if he doesn’t show, that kid gets to go back to Philly and be free, for real, permanently. And maybe it’ll mean the end of this marriage bullshit, as a bonus. At least that’s what Jess tells himself, and at the same time he tells Liz:

“Okay.”

“Yeah?” She sounds so happy it hurts to hear. “Where are you staying?”

“Jacksonville.” He’s almost embarrassed, they couldn’t even make it to Daytona. “Some place called The Bluefin boardinghouse, it’s a shithole, the sign’s broken, tell whoever’s coming to aim for the Sea Sprite instead, it’s right next to it.”

After he’s hung up he buys cigarettes and sits down at the mostly abandoned beach smoking them, and actually writing, nothing inspired, just something about the futility of waves. He’s been to California, to Philly, to Florida, it makes no difference, things never change, never start making sense. Now he knows why he should have gone with the guys after all, if he had, he wouldn’t have called Liz and he wouldn’t have to know. He’d gladly put himself in front of that guy’s fist again to not have to sit here like this. He shouldn’t have come here, but now he remembers why he did. He likes his friends, they have some sway over him. He walks back to the hostel and goes to bed.

The next day starts out slow enough, the guys are hungover, but perk up quickly as Alex offers pancakes at this surfer’s café he’s heard of. After breakfast they camp out at the beach in what little shade they can find. Alex and Matt go wakeboarding but the rest stay on land, Chris can’t swim, and Eddy falls asleep in the sand, winding up with more sunburn than he bargained for. They start planning the night out early though. They talk about the places as if they’ve lived here for weeks. Jess stays quiet. After a few minutes Eddy shoves him.

“What’s eating you?”

Matt gestures dismissively.

“Oh he’s just pissed we didn’t go to Key West.”

“But look at that shiner though, pure Hemingway.” Alex remarks, gracing Jess’s aching cheekbone with his pointing finger.

Jess slaps his hand away. 

“The only thing this proves is that I hang out with a bunch of clowns.”

Eddy laughs, but Chris acts like he might as well not have said anything at all and grabs his shoulder.

“You have to come out tonight! Chicks are unable to resist that shit.”

He decides to go with them anyway, someone has to keep an eye on them, even a bruised one, and he remembers last night. It’s better if they stick together.

The fact that he doesn’t have any beer money means nothing. Alex is buying. So he has a drink, actually more than one. But it doesn’t help, it’s not doing the distracting it’s meant to do. Liz is getting married, and he doesn’t have to get involved, it doesn’t have to affect his life, he gets to let it go. So let it go!

Chris turns out to be annoyingly correct about the black eye though. Jess attracts attention without lifting a finger, and the attention comes with friends. The group wind up spread across several small tables, the guys all talking to the girlfriends of the one who honed in on Jess. It does serve as a pretty decent distraction, unfortunately only for a little while.

The girl is cute, more than cute actually. It would be the easiest thing for him to get her out of here. But he doesn’t really want to, and he can’t pretend otherwise. For one thing he doesn’t have anywhere to take her that doesn’t have paper thin walls, and he doesn’t want to ask about her place. It all reminds him a bit too much of scrounging for places to stay. Another thing is that he doesn’t really want her. It’s nothing personal. He hasn’t wanted anyone for a year. 

And she doesn’t really want him. Okay, maybe she does, but for all the wrong reasons, and he is incapable of shaking that insight. She fidgets in her seat and moves an inch closer. He decides to put an end to it before it gets embarrassing.

“Listen, where do you go?”

“Bryn Mawr.”

“I barely graduated High School.”

She frowns mid-smile.

“I don’t care about that stuff.”

“You should.” He smiles, to not seem too harsh. “I have no money, I share an apartment with four other guys,” he gestures at the others, “I work at a diner, that is when I’m working, the only reason I’m even on this trip is because I’m a literary fanboy. That’s how I’m bad news. This-” He gestures at his own face. “-it’s just bad luck.”

She stops smiling.

”I’m also a major buzzkill.” He adds.

Over her shoulder he catches Chris shaking his head.

The girl rolls her eyes and gets up.

“Have it your way.” She walks off.

One of her friends, the one talking to Chris, follows her towards the bathroom, and the other girls look after them, obviously scattered.

“What are you doing? It was right there!” Chris whines.

“Mind your own game.”

“You call that game?”

“The perfect game for that particular outcome.” Jess mumbles.

“And I would love to tend to my own, but it ran after yours!”

The remaining girls get up and head for the bar.

Chris falls over on the vinyl couch, groaning.

“I don’t get you, man.”

“I do.” 

It’s Matt, and very drunk from the sound and look of it. He abandons his seat a couple of tables over and saunters up to them taking the chair opposite Chris. He gestures at Jess.

“He’s hung up on this girl who came into the coffee shop-”

Jess stiffens, just because it happens to be true doesn’t mean he wants to talk about it, ever again, preferably.

“Great. I’ve been looking for an opportunity to get my fist to match my face.” he growls.

Matt doesn’t register it over the loud music.

“-Like, one time-” He goes on, raising a finger to mark the number, slurring the words.

“Kind of a pass-it-forward,” Jess continues, under his breath, “y’know, from one douche to another.”

“-when he was still in New York.”

The guys have leaned in for the story and start laughing, and Matt looks pleased.

“One time?” Eddy asks.

“Yeah.” Matt laughs a little. “Just the one time. They didn’t even-” He spots Jess glaring at him. “-trade numbers.” He finishes lamely.

Jess smiles, and speaks distinctly, calmly, on the surface that is.

“For the record, I told him that in confidence, just in case some of you are considering gracing him with the same privilege.”

The laughter picks up again. But Chris leans in.

“Wait, is that one girl, one time, like, a year ago, the reason you just sent away enough girls to feed us through the winter? Where is your sense of community?”

He has a point, and unfortunately Jess can’t think of anything to say in response to it. 

Chris smiles, genuinely curious this time.

“You know you’ll never see her again, right?” 

Jess has told himself a thousand times, but it’s worse hearing it. He lets it sink in, and lifts his head to Chris, nods.

“Yeah.”

Chris squints at him for a second before widening his eyes again, and nodding in response.

“Okay.” He smiles a little. “Ironically, if you combine your black eye with that story you’d be unstoppable.”

Another burst of laughter. 

They’re on the sidewalk outside the Sea Sprite. It’s almost four in the morning, and the clubs have closed, meaning all the music is coming from hotel room windows, car stereos, food stands. The herds of people are starting to thin out, streets won't be empty for a couple of more hours though. Chris is the only one who’s gotten lucky, Alex and Eddy have done nothing but collect numbers and fool around. Matt sways a little, but more from fatigue, having finally sobered up, on his second cup of coffee. They’re all leaning on the aqua painted wall surrounding the nicer hotel, looking out over the dark beach. 

Jess is smoking and observing Alex and Eddy who still try to talk to girls passing them, and make for pretty decent entertainment. But mostly he looks at the night sky, listens to the sound of the ocean, and the wind through the palm trees. There are still people moving around out there in the sand, couples making out, some guy yelling incoherently, but still. He likes that part of the tropics, he’ll admit. A group of people crosses the street, heading for the hotel and their hostels, and Alex and Eddy perk up, scanning the crowd like meerkats. Jess laughs quietly, and takes a drag from his cigarette.

Then there's a flash of blue that stops his heart. But it’s gone in a second. 

He’s used to it. He dreams about her frequently, asleep and awake, and has been sure he’s seen her a couple of times, despite his head knowing better.

A truck rolls around the corner, driving slowly, the driver apparently scanning the street for parking places and finding none. It stops in front of the Sea Sprite. Traffic is anything but heavy this time of night, so it can probably remain there for a while. The driver rolls down a window and looks around the sidewalk.

“Hey!” He calls, hitting his horn when no one responds.

Alex and Eddy turn around, reluctantly tearing their gazes from the girls in front of the entrance.

”I’m looking for Jess Mariano!”

The guys turn to Jess, kind of wide eyed. He frowns, pushes himself off of the wall, squinting at the driver in the darkness of the car. The figure leans closer to the window.

“Jess?” He asks.

”Who wants to know?”

”His uncle.”

Jess takes a few steps to the edge of the sidewalk, and sees the man through the open window.

”Luke?”

His uncle hasn’t been relevant to him for years, lifetimes by the feel of it. His memory of him is split in two, one part being an idea, a concept without any real context, the other is coming back to him now; something about certain clothes, a tone of voice, a height, a mass, a baseball cap. The man in the truck tilts his head. The cap is still there, apparently. 

“I’m here to get ya.” Luke says.

Jess’s heartbeat picks up some. Not in his wildest dreams did he imagine this. If Liz sent Luke she means business, she really wants him there. He puts out his cigarette.

”I’ll get my stuff.”

He walks into their room and returns out with his duffel bag a couple of minutes later, says goodbye to the guys and gets in the car. 

Luke shifts the gear and steps on the gas. They drive off. He looks at the streets they pass, the people. The crowds lessen dramatically after just a few blocks, and the sidewalks revert to what they should be this time of night, this time of morning.

“Did you have a good time?” Luke asks, gaze steadily on the street ahead.

Jess shrugs.

“Okay, I guess.”

Luke nods, then clears his throat.

“Uhm, sorry about the ungodly hour. I don’t know if you remember but I run a diner, this is kinda my natural cycle.” He nods to himself. “I left a message at the hostel last night about it.”

Jess snorts.

“I don’t think I’ve seen the reception manned once since we came here, we got our keys from a vending machine.”

“Oh.”

“But it’s fine, we were up.” He’s surprised at himself, he’s not the reassuring type.

“Yeah about that;” Luke says. “I caught a couple of hours at a stop by Brunswick, so I’m good for a while. I’m assuming you got your license.”

Jess nods. 

“You go ahead and sleep.” Luke says. “We’ll trade places in a few hours.”

Jess gets a hoodie up from his bag and uses it as a pillow. He’s grateful for the excuse to close his eyes even if he isn’t tired. They leave Jacksonville and he leans on the sweater, looks out the window at the passing lights, glances at his uncle's profile. He remembers awkward visits, something vague about an amusement park and an argument with Liz, a hardware store, maybe, ages ago. A flannel shirt left behind, his mother wore it to shreds. A smell, no cologne, soap, and french fries. His birthday, a wrapped book. He reaches for it in his mind; Huck Finn, Liz must’ve told Luke he read a lot, but skipped or missed the part about him already being done with Twain and London and into ransacking the library for anything Hemingway or Fitzgerald. It was a pretty edition though; cloth cover, golden details, a book ribbon, and a happy birthday wish written on the first page. So he kept it, still has it actually, back in New York, assuming Liz hasn’t tossed it. He remembers a feeling, a calm. Before he knows it he’s asleep.

He’s in a dark, small space. He doesn’t know how long he’s been there, but there are noises tearing at the walls. There’s screaming, most from mom, some from Him, there are thuds and bangs, bangs and thuds. Maybe he’s sleeping and can’t wake up. One of his eyes is sealed shut, like it’s stuck in a nightmare. He doesn’t know how long he’s been there, he wants to leave but has done what he can to stop the door from opening. The ragged buzzing of a door bell. It’s pushed until it becomes something else. A crash, deep voices barking like wolves, he’s been reading White Fang, mom has a copy with a dramatic cover that draws him in. Exposed sharp teeth. The door opens, his barriers broken, like it’s nothing, and he can’t see for the light. It’s cold, the front door is open, and He’s gonna be furious. Someone picks him up. No one has picked him up since he started walking, but he’s lifted, like it’s nothing. A smell, no alcohol, no cologne, soap, and french fries, decisive movements, muscles. He clings to it, clutches his hands around it, a height, a mass, because he wants to hold on. His feet are bare, it’s winter and they’re outside. Mom is crying, he is crying, but he’s happy.

He wakes up at a gas station. A sound stuck in his throat, maybe he wakes up from it. He jerks out of sleep and looks around, disoriented and relieved to find Luke gone. The driver’s seat is empty. Jess looks out the window and sees his uncle walking from the shop carrying a bag and a thermos. The sun is coming up. He straightens in his seat, drags his hands through his hair.

“You're up.” Luke says as he takes his seat.

“You need me to-” Jess starts but has to clear his throat, “-drive?” He finishes.

“Nope.” Luke responds, and steps on the gas. 

They get back on the freeway. Luke glances at him and hands him the thermos.

“Coffee.” He says.

“Thanks.” Jess accepts it and takes a sip, burning his tongue.

“You see, we’re already in South Carolina.” Luke says, as if continuing some discussion they’ve already begun even if Jess has no idea what it’s about. “Whoever starts a state, gets to finish it.” He continues, tone explanatory. “Or has to, depending on things.”

Jess stares at him.

“My old man, your grandfather, used to- and then me and your mom, back before-” He falls quiet.

“I get the gist.” Jess offers.

They drive on for a while in silence. Jess takes another few sips from the thermos and hands it to Luke, who makes a face at his own gulp.

“God that’s horrible.”

Jess chuckles.

“So, the wedding...” Luke says.

“Yeah.” Jess responds. “I was gonna catch the next one, but here we are.”

“Yeah, I hear ya.” Luke mutters. “I certainly can’t see the appeal of the guy, but I never could.” 

He leans over slightly, digs through the bag with one hand, pulls out a power bar, and hands it to Jess, who stares at it. Luke gives him a short but distinct look.

“Don’t tell me you’re one of those just-coffee-people?”

He kind of is, but he opens the package anyway and nibbles at the bar.

“Mind telling me what happened to your eye?” Luke asks.

Jess has his mouth full of the first bite. He forces it down and shakes his head.

“It’s nothing, I just have this buddy who can’t tell when a girl is taken.” He’s one to talk.

“Oh.” Luke takes another gulp and makes another grimace. “Well, it’s not always easy telling the difference.”

“And it doesn’t always matter.” Jess takes another bite.

Luke snickers, glances at him.

“Do you often take punches for your buddies?”

Jess doesn’t feel like answering, doesn’t know which answer would piss his uncle off the most, doesn’t know which he’d pick. He’s more than a bit distracted by the fact that Luke is here at all. Liz called him for this, and he did it, for her. Jess is having trouble remembering when he last was in his uncle’s presence, to his knowledge Liz and Luke haven't spoken for years. But, he reluctantly admits that he hasn’t paid attention, he made the decision not to. 

“So, how long have you and Liz been on favor terms again?” He asks.

Luke blinks, looks back at the road with increased concentration.

“Uhm… Not long. A few months.”

Jess nods silently.

“She didn’t tell you?” Luke asks.

“I didn’t ask, we don’t talk a lot.” Jess fiddles with the wrapper on the bar.

“Nah, I got that.”

“Pretty big favor.” Jess mumbles, before clarifying. “Driving to Florida.”

“She seemed adamant about this.” Luke shrugs. “About the guy too.”

“She has been before, and wrong to match.” Jess mutters. 

“Yeah, but-” Luke goes quiet.

“But what?”

Luke takes a breath, as if he’s bracing himself.

“She really wanted you there this time, that’s what she was so set on. Before-” 

More silence. Jess just looks at him, mercilessly waiting.

“Before it seems she was hiding, if that makes any sense.”

Jess sighs.

“Enough, I guess.” He admits and leans back in his seat.

It might be enough for Luke. But it doesn’t even matter if the guy’s not dangerous or mean, under any circumstance he’s just other, a future Jess has no part in, and oblivious to the past that has shaped Liz and him. Luke never had to be there for all of it. Not that it matters. He doesn’t deserve Jess’s substantial attitude on the matter. He’s not the one with the questionable judgement, the fact that he broke contact with Liz is proof of the opposite. Jess lets it go.

The sun is up, and flickering through the trees they pass. Jess closes his eyes, and feels their forward motion in the constant shift between the red and gray. And then, sleep creeps up on him again. It snares him and pulls him back down. 

And he doesn’t know it until he wakes up. The trees have been replaced by billboards. The crick in his neck lets him know he’s actually been under for a while. He’s a light sleeper, constantly deprived, but apparently not in a northbound truck with his estranged uncle. He’s calm, and keeps resting against the window. He imagines being carried, like by a current in the ocean, or by a height, a mass, because you want to hold on. The signs along the road announce food stops and shops and screams repeatedly at him until he finally registers that they’re coming up on South of the border.

“Hey.” He says, sitting up straight. “We gotta stop.”

“You hungry?”

“No, yes, just, if I’m gonna drive we should change before the border, right?”

Luke looks at him, surprised, and smiles.

“Yeah.” He takes the next exit.

They get apple pie, and better coffee, and more snacks for the drive, and then Jess crosses the border to North Carolina, with slightly panicked instructions from Luke. 

He has never driven a car like this, and, to be honest hasn’t driven much since he got his licence. Alex’s car was an automatic and the drive to Florida split between the five of them. He only got his licence to begin with to keep his options open, all exits available, strictly routine. 

Freeway driving is cake, still, it takes Luke at least half an hour to get comfortable enough to get some sleep himself. But when he does fall asleep he’s gone, lost in sleep, snoring. 

Just how unaccustomed Jess is as a driver becomes clear after a couple of hours, when his body starts aching from the tension. He still soldiers on, won’t ask Luke to change when he’s driven over a thousand miles with almost no breaks, just to get a kid who didn’t want to come to begin with. Also, there’s the border game. He shakes his head. This is so strange. 

“Last I heard you went to California. How is Jimmy?” 

Luke’s voice comes from the passenger seat, the words are stretched out by a jawn, making Jess comfortable enough to answer.

“Useful as ever.” Jess says tightly. “His woman is cool though, better than he deserves.”

“She would be.” Luke says, straightening in his seat. “I felt the same way when he was with Liz, but I don’t know, maybe I’m biased, brother and all.” He pulls off his cap to run a hand through his hair, before putting it back again. “It’s strange, ‘cause I’m hard on her, but it’s like I’m the only one allowed to be.” He chuckles a little. “Even now I’m-” He sighs, sharply, then goes on, a bit too evenly paced, like he’s repeating after someone. “You know, the real trouble with things like this is that you just never really get to know in advance. You just, gotta have faith.” He clears his throat. “And that is not my strong side,” now he sounds more like himself, “I’m more of a guy with a tool box.”

Jess smiles, surprised at how warm it feels.

“Wait and see. Hope for the best. Ugh!” Luke goes on. “Am I cut out for that? No!”

Jess chuckles and Luke keeps going, on some kind of roll apparently, maybe encouraged by his nephew’s amusement.

“And I got this friend who’s constantly yapping at me:” He does a voice. ”You gotta keep trying! And your mother is no better,” he points at Jess, “put yourself out there! And she was talking about my love life, but-” Luke stops, glances at Jess, furtive, but Jess must look the right kind of entertained, because he sighs and goes on. “But I’ve been thinking about it and I think maybe it’s applicable to other relationships too.” 

Jess nods.

“Maybe you just gotta choose the right people to do it for.” He suggests.

Luke smiles.

“Right. Win or lose.”

When did he last see his uncle? How can he sit here and talk with him like this? 

“And sometimes you don’t get a choice.” Jess says, before he finishes his thought.

Luke gets serious.

“Right.”

They put another few miles to rest before they speak again.

“So,” Luke says, “what are you up to these days?” 

Running away. Then just staying put. Staying alive. The plan was to grow over it, not the other way around, he just, doesn’t know how to move on without running. Jess's chest aches, he doesn’t know how to let it, so he answers, helplessly hoping.

“I’m just, making ends meet.” He says, vaguely gesturing over his shoulder. “The guys are great, but they all have their own-” He takes a breath. “-Purpose.”

“Not you?” Luke picks up a water bottle, unscrewing the cork.

“Not that I know of.”

There’s silence.

“I write a little.” Jess says despite it feeling like he’s pulling the words out with their roots.

“Really?” Luke turns his head to him, smiles. “Figures, with all the books.” He nods slowly, taking a sip from the bottle. “A writer.”

Jess doesn’t trust his voice, so he just focuses on driving, looking ahead, letting the word lie there, between them. 

“We’ll stop for lunch at the rapids.” Luke says after a while. “And switch.”

They do. They find a diner by the river. They get takeout and sit by the boat dock and eat. A group of people are struggling with unloading a boat into the wet, shouting and gesturing at the guy backing the haul into the water. Luke snickers at the show and Jess smiles along at his amusement. After a while though, Luke seems to twitch, having to stop himself from getting involved. He busies himself with wrapping up his left-overs instead, and catches Jess looking at him.

“I have a boat myself.” He explains. “A tiny place by a lake upstate. I always meant to take you there.” 

There’s a pause, and they stare at each other. Both surprised, apparently.

“It’s okay.” Jess says, mouth full of food. “I’m not really an outdoorsy kind of guy.”

“Maybe ‘cause no one showed you how.” Luke stops himself abruptly and gets up, gathering their trash to throw it away.

Jess chews his food. Does Luke owe him something? Is he meant to collect it? He counts. One year back he left New York, two years before that he was sixteen and promised to stay. Another two years back, fourteen, he had definitely stopped listening by then. Which birthday was the last he celebrated with Liz? Which was the last Luke attended? When he turned twelve? What did the birthday wish written in the book say? 

The boat is finally successfully unloaded without Luke’s assistance, but Jess keeps staring at the water, lost in thought.

They leave a little while later. They drive quietly for a little while but Jess has trouble handling it now. When they cross the next state line he opens the glove compartment. Luke looks embarrassed.

“I probably don’t-” He starts and makes a motion as if to reach over and close it, but Jess blocks it with his shoulder.

He pulls out a number of cassette tapes smiling broader for each title he reads.

“What’ll it be, uncle Luke? Jethro Tull, Jethro Tull, REO Speedwagon, or Jimmy Buffett?”

“I told you-”

“How about John Denver?”

Luke smiles reluctantly.

“Well, this is Virginia.”

“Yeah, but it’s supposed to be West Virginia.” Jess objects. “Totally different vibe.”

“‘Totally’?”

“‘You can tune a piano but you can’t tuna fish’, it is.” Jess laughs.

He can’t make sense of himself. What is he missing? What has he forgotten? Chosen not to think about? The dream from this morning comes across him, like a cold undercurrent. He turns up the volume on the crappy stereo.

Hours pass. Jess switches tapes, and gradually turns up the volume, meddling with the settings until Luke leans over and turns the music down.

“So,” he starts, “where do you want me to drop you?”

Jess stares at him. 

“I wasn’t aware I had a choice.” 

Luke shrugs, makes eye contact.

“I’m not holding you against your will. I can drop you along the way, but your mother mentioned you needed a job.”

Jess keeps looking at him, for the other shoe to drop.

“I run a diner.”

“You mentioned that.”

“You can work for me, if you like, stay with me until the wedding.” Luke clears his throat, looks away. “Or for as long as you like, really.” He adds.

Jess blinks. Quite an offer. He is incapable of taking it in. Instead he reverts to his roads more travelled. He pictures road maps. If Luke drops him in Philadelphia he’ll have an address, and if he’s willing to pick up his wayward nephew as a favor to his sister, he’ll have no trouble passing on that address to her. The bus fare between New York and Philadelphia is okay, he can handle it, especially since Luke has paid for everything since Florida. 

“New York is fine.” Jess says, quickly.

Luke nods, Jess looks at him as he does, feeling guilty and grateful, and something else, something bitter it can’t possibly be. 

They keep driving. Jess tries to shake the conversation. What was he thinking, really? He sets out to plan for arriving in New York, getting to Philadelphia, calling his employer, calling Liz with a definite no, but none of it feels comfortable. He reads a little, and fidgets with his notebook, trying to get over his self awareness to write some, but gives it up, the shaking vehicle is going to ruin his handwriting anyway. The sun leans in the sky, casting it’s light more specifically in the direction they’re heading, and something, the opposite of sleep, sneaks up on him, closer, and increasingly unsettling. Funny how what felt like being carried just a few hours ago, feels like being dragged now. 

They approach Washington.

“Shouldn’t we trade places?” Jess asks, hoping for something to do.

“Nah. I better get us through the city, the place is a mess, we’ll switch outside of Baltimore instead.”

Luke’s right. They’re stuck for a while. They’re right in time for rush hour, and Jess’s thoughts turn as slow and incoherent as the traffic, and it’s late afternoon before they can trade places.

“You wanna stop and eat?”

Luke shakes his head.

“Let’s get to Jersey first, I know the stops there better.”

Jess drives. The traffic is worse than down south, and his head is beginning to hurt. Actually it might be a little because they’re closing in on Philadelphia and he’s starting to feel genuinely torn on this. He doesn’t know how to get out without running. He thinks about bus routes and ways to get from whatever stop in Jersey to town. He could get back to the apartment. Be alone. Pretend none of this is happening, that none of it happened. His throat hurts, and he remembers the dream from this morning more vividly as the light gets lower. 

Finally Luke gestures them off the road, to a big stop holding a number of complexes, malls, amusement parks, and food courts.

They park and head indoors, on the way Jess looks around, locating the bus stops, memorizing the numbers, and tries recalling the time tables, he still does that. The sun casts long shadows that reach for him.

“Something the matter?” Luke asks. 

He shakes his head slightly.

Luke finds a salad bar he deems worthy and gets food for the both of them, despite Jess being too distracted to specify what he wants. He sits at the table waiting for Luke, looking around the court, trying to anchor himself to the boring, the normal, the grey reality of the place, the dumb top forty playing over the speakers. He fails though. Instead, the place seems haunted. He thinks about their stop in South Carolina, their lunch by the river, the sunlight, the outside air, the temporary freedom. He wishes he was back there, at the sidewalk outside the Sea Sprite, and having his name called out over a sea of strangers, a car running, waiting for him. He wishes that Luke had never asked where to drop him. 

Luke returns with their meals, and seems perfectly content to eat without making chit-chat. It does however mean he finishes his food quickly and then winds up looking at Jess who just plays with his salad. Luke takes a few jagged breaths and fidgets in his seat, like he’s giving himself some sort of internal pep talk. Jess looks up at him, mercilessly waiting. 

“What’s going on?” Luke asks.

Jess doesn’t know why it drives him crazy, which pisses him off further.

“Nothing new and exciting.” He mumbles in response.

Luke slides his tray off to the side of the table.

“Humor me.”

Getting overgrown or staying in constant motion. If they get into an argument here, he could get out, justified. Get on the bus. Be alone.

“I’m just sick of feeling like this.” His voice sounds strange.

Luke leans in and looks at him.

“Jess, if you want me to drive you to wherever home is I’ll do it.”

Jess blinks at him.

“You’re an adult. You decide.” Luke sighs. “And I get it.”

“How could you possibly get it?” He has no idea where the words are coming from, or his tone, rancorous.

Luke leans back in his chair. Liz sent him, he complied. He runs a diner. Two days and then some. Two thousand miles and more. That’s the time, the distance he’s put into getting him, doing something for Liz, like any of them deserves it.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been around much.” Luke says, lowly. “The last time I saw you you were just a kid.”

“I’ve never been just a kid.” Jess spits. “But whatever, right? You’re in good fucking company, I’ve never met any one of our kind that’s to be trusted, why should you be any different, why should I?”

Luke stares at him for a beat, frowning. Then he leans in, too quickly for Jess to do anything about it, and grabs his lower arm.

“It’s not true, Jess.” He says, firmly. “Your grandfather was a good man, I’m a good man.” He puts his free hand to his own chest, “And you’re gonna be too. Stay tuned.” He lets go of him and straightens in his chair. 

Jess’s heart hammers in his chest, his throat burns, but he can’t talk, if he does it’ll just be pain. Luke speaks again.

“I did this for your benefit, but you get to do what you want with that.”

It’s starting to dawn on Jess that maybe he doesn’t want that choice, like too many things in his life have been up to him. Liz used to threaten to send him away. It was more of a standing offer. He should have taken her up on it while he had the chance. Shoulda, coulda, woulda. But the thing is making decisions means stating preferences, and as soon as you do that you’ve shown your hand, you’re vulnerable. And you only get to blame yourself when things go wrong.

Luke keeps talking, softer this time, eyes on the table surface.

“You know what, that’s not entirely true; I did it for me too.” He sighs. “I could blame staying away on it being too painful to see Liz make such horrible choices for herself over and over again, but the truth is-” He pauses, his jaws clenching under his stubble, he exhales sharply and fixes Jess with a look. “The truth is I’ve been refusing to let anything happen to me, bad or good, been constantly angry, if you know what that's like.”

Jess swallows, bites his lower lip and tries to get himself under control. Luke goes on.

“I’ve been trapped in myself for a long time. So when Liz asked me to go I figured it would be a chance for me to… get out. She asked for the favor but I came for you.” He leans on the last word and points at him for emphasis. “Because it was you.” 

Finally Jess manages to speak.

“You don’t owe me anything. Not really.”

Luke shrugs.

“That’s just a technicality.”

Jess frowns.

“Things are about to change.” Luke adds, nodding. 

A guy with a toolbox. Jess can’t stop a helpless chuckle, even if it feels a lot like something else. Luke is sorry. Luke has the audacity to make promises. You get to choose some of the people you keep trying for. Jess clings to it, clutches his hands around it, a height, a mass, because he wants to hold on. He closes his fists around his cutlery. Breathes, in and out. Then he takes a few quick, decisive bites of his food. He stacks their plates onto the crate and gets up, taking his unopened soda for the last part of the drive.

“Let’s go.”

They stop by a payphone, and Luke calls his employee at the diner. Jess waits nearby, shifting his weight, sipping his soda. The dream is still right there, squirming under the surface, more real than anything around them. Luke ends the call and they walk across the parking lot. Jess reaches to open the car door, when it hits him; It’s not a dream, it’s a memory. 

“Jess?” Luke stops too, his hand on the handle on his side, and meets Jess’s eyes across the hood of the truck.

It feels like a sinkhole opening up in the middle of a parking lot and his hand tightens around the handle, but Jess has to know for sure before he gets back into the vehicle, before they leave just to drive further into another night.

“Hey Luke?”

“Yeah?”

What was His name? Would He even have a name? Of course He would, He was just a person, just a horrible human. Dean, Dan…?

“Don.” He says, just like that, while the ground shakes underneath him.

Luke’s eyes go black, that’s how it seems, his face gets hard.

“What about him?” His voice sounds strained.

Jess just looks at him, revels at the anger in his face, it feels like a mirror, like strength. Everything gets quiet, still again. The ground is solid. Someone picked him up, no one had picked him up since he started walking, but he was lifted like it was nothing. By Luke. Liz couldn’t, still can’t. She’s not in a position to carry anyone. Her back is broken. Don broke it. 

Jess swallows.

“Thank you.” He mostly shapes the words with his mouth, unable to produce sound.

Luke blinks, the anger runs off him. He nods.

They get into the truck. Luke drives. They reach New York and get tangled up in the evening traffic on their way to the Holland tunnel. Just a couple of miles more to the east and he’s back where he started, his room, his books, the school he almost dropped out of, the coffee shop, the park, bad company, girls he screwed for bedspace. They’re just sitting there, red-lit by all the taillights, brake lights ahead. Stand Up by Jethro Tull running from the speakers. If Liz sent Luke to get him she meant business, but did Jess get into the truck for her? Or for Luke? 

“I’ll-” He starts, stops, the words are too strange to speak, but he has to, now. “I’ll come with you.”

Luke looks at him.

“You sure?”

He’s not, but he doesn’t want it to end here.

“I’m sure.” 

Luke shoots him a smile, before turning the wheel, changing lanes.

The last leg of the drive is silent at first, just the endless flutes from the tape mingling with the humming from the engine, and a sort of elation filling the car. Jess feels raw, vibrating, wound tightly, full of trembling air. And Luke keeps smiling. Around Hartford however, he starts talking, a little at first but with increasing intensity, until it strikes Jess that it’s because he’s nervous. He’s trying to prepare Jess for the town. He describes the layout, the different parts of it, the businesses, before moving on to the people.

“Listen Jess,” his tone is apologetic, “the place is a lot to take in, a little bit crazy.”

“Crazy how?”

Luke tilts his head back and forth as if taking inventory. Uh-oh.

“Well, there’s the plain crazy, this guy Kirk, you’ll get to know him real quick, he’s at the diner every day, easy to spot, he kind of looks like that muppet-” he scratches his head through his cap. “The one with the beak- Beaker?”

“Beaker doesn’t have a beak.”

“Then what’s with the name?” Luke seems genuinely upset, but gets himself under control. “Gosh, what is his name, I wanna say Gonzo but I know it’s not him-”

“Sam Eagle?”

Luke snaps his finger.

“That’s the one; Sam Eagle’s awkward cousin!”

Jess laughs.

“Then there’s the gossip-column: Babette and Miss Patty, you’ll wanna watch the hands on the latter especially, and then some of your mother’s old friends, both handsy and nosey”

Jess shakes his head. What has he gotten himself into? Something else.

“-And just stay out of Taylor’s way as much as possible, just plain avoid him, he looks like-”

“Is this gonna be another muppet cavalcade?”

“Nevermind, I’ll just point him out at the diner tomorrow, unless you recognize him first what with all the sweater vests and bossing people around.”

Jess makes a mental note of it and tries to brace himself.

“How do you stand it?” He asks.

“Practice.” Luke sighs. 

Jess chuckles and shakes his head.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” Luke starts, “you always matter, around here, for better and for worse.”

They arrive in Luke’s town at midnight. Stars Hollow. It sounds made up, but it’s right there, the streets dark and empty, even a starlit sky overneath. Luke parks the truck next to his diner and Jess steps out of it, slams the door shut and looks around, gaze immediately sticking to the sign: William’s Hardware. 

A hardware store. Someone picked him up, Luke. This is where he was carried. This is the place. He’s been here before. He smiles, before following Luke inside, upstairs.

Luke gets out a mattress and bedlinen. The wardrobe is filled with flannel. Jess smirks while making the mattress, but realizes that from what Luke’s told him about the shopping possibilities around here he might have to borrow a lot of it during the coming weeks. Luke makes a couple of simple sandwiches and Jess downs his in a couple of bites having skipped the meal back at the mall in Jersey. They’re just about to turn in when the phone rings. Luke frowns.

“Let the machine get it.”

The answering machine beeps and Liz's voice crackles in through it.

“Hi! Sorry to call so late, just wanted to see if you made it back home-”

Luke picks up the receiver and answers with a few monosyllabic sounds.

“Look, we’re just about to turn in-” He twitches at a sound on the other end that even Jess can hear, and holds the receiver a few inches from his ear.

Jess takes a couple of steps and grabs the phone from Luke’s hand. Luke gives him a grateful look.

“Liz, it’s me.”

“Jess!” She sounds happy. “You finally made your way to Stars Hollow.”

“Pretty sure someone else made my way here.”

“Tomato, tomaato.”

Luke goes into the bathroom and Jess lifts up the phone and takes it as far as the cord lets him. He sits down on his mattress with it in his lap.

“And I’ve been here before.” He says.

There’s a pause.

“I didn’t think you remembered.”

“Neither did I.”

He listens for background noises, thinks he hears the sound of someone in a kitchen. Liz is quiet. He breathes, and waits, without the usual panic, stress over the minutes slowly eating through his quarters. She’s calling this time, and knows where he is.

”You know,” she breathes after a bit, “I wasn’t sure you’d actually come with Luke.”

He frowns.

“And still you sent him?”

“I had to try. If I didn’t I’d just have the option of one outcome.”

“Yeah, well-”

“I’m glad you came.” She says. “And that the two of you get to spend some time together.”

He nods, before remembering he has to make a sound.

“Yeah.” He says.

It’s quiet for a few seconds.

“So, basically, I was just calling to check in.” She says.

He presses the receiver against his bruised skin, it’s one step closer to healing and doesn’t hurt anymore if you leave it be. He thinks about Florida, just the other night, and about the hallway floor years ago. As if she read his mind she says, voice slightly thick:

“You know, you still have your old room here, it’s fixed up and everything,” she stops for a breath and it sounds like a sniffle, “I just keep a few of my boxes there and I could move ‘em quick as anything if you prefer- if you want to come back-”

He does, kind of. But he can’t. Not now. Maybe never. His decision in the traffic jam hours ago is just one piece of evidence of that. But he wants to. That’s why he promised to stay that night, years ago. It was already too late by then, and maybe that’s why he’s here, further back, looking for some place, a time, when it wasn’t. 

“Jess?” 

He still knows nothing about her guy, and hasn’t thought about the million ways things could have gone wrong had she sent him to Florida. He’s grateful she didn’t, because he got into that truck for Luke, for himself. So something else could happen. Anything. And him taking a chance on that, on himself, on Luke, comes with the chance for him and Liz too. No getting around that. 

“I know you still don’t want to come to the wedding.” She says.

He sighs.

“I’m here aren’t I?”

“Yeah, but your heart-”

“Jeez-” He starts, listening, making sure Luke is still busy in the bathroom before speaking. “Nevermind my heart. I’m here. Let’s just, start with that.”

“Okay.” Her response is quicker this time.

“I’m gonna go.” He says, then adds. “We’ll talk more later.”

He hangs up and remains on his bed, sitting, and staring blankly, holding the phone. The bathroom door opens and Luke comes out, peaking at him.

“You okay?”

Jess is silent. Luke takes a few steps closer to Jess’s part of the apartment.

“Look, Jess,” he starts, slight worry in his voice, “I know coming here, that it’s a big change-”

Jess gets up, and puts the phone back.

“I'm kinda counting on it.” He says holding his uncle’s gaze for a second, shooting him a small smile, before going to bed.


	5. The End, or Whatever

_May_

The day after Rory gets back from Florida Lorelai calls and tells her she’s broken up with Jason. It’s not that Rory likes him per se, but that she didn’t see it coming, not this soon, and her mother’s breakups usually come attached with some other catastrophe.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“You were busy, I was busy, and I can’t have a wallow in Häagen-Dazs and dumb movies night without you, so I was hoping to schedule one for us this week.”

“That’s very organized of you.”

“My life has left me no choice! Tomorrow?”

“I will be there.”

She’s relieved at the prospect of a night with her mother. All she has at school is two papers due, and the unspoken question of her lovelife or lack of one growing bigger, and after spring break - a limping walk down memory lane and the looming future of sifting through dussins of insufficient idiots in the dating pool - she just wants out of thinking about that for an evening. She even turns her phone off and leaves her reading material in her bag when arriving in Stars Hollow. Lorelai is the same as always, maybe a little tired, but that seems to be from business at the Inn. Half a move in and down a package of ice cream, Rory goes for the conversation.

“What happened with Jason?”

Lorelai shrugs, like she’s not really interested in talking about it.

“Nothing. It wore off.” She shovels another spoon of ice cream into her mouth. “I've actually known I had to break up with him since February, but I’ve just been so busy.”

“Mom.”

“I’m serious. And after I knew, it took me a while to decide on a strategy, y’know, put together a speech, and then we both got busy, it took us almost three weeks to get a proper date.” She counts on her fingers. “Then when I broke the news, he thought I should think about it, so I thought about it, that’s another week.”

Rory stares at her.

“It took you a month to break up with a guy?”

“What? Not everybody’s like you.”

She frowns.

“Like me?” 

“Like how you broke up with Dean! You were, what, struck by lightning, opened your mouth and said goodbye!” Lorelai points at Rory with all her fingers. “That’s a little weird in the other direction.”

It wasn’t like that though, Rory wants to protest. It had been in the works for at least a couple of weeks, maybe months, possibly even years, counting all of her and Dean’s on again off again bullshit. There’s also the excursion to New York, but Lorelai still doesn’t know everything about that. Rory sighs.

“Okay, so, as of now, how long has it been since you actually broke up?”

“Two weeks.”

Rory gapes.

“We’ve talked like four times since then! I was here before going on spring break!”

“Neither of those occasions was the right time to discuss it!”

”You sound like grandma!”

Lorelai yelps and slaps Rory’s hand.

”Hush!”

“So this is what? A ceremonial wallowing?”

“Yeah. What? It’s an important step!”

“I would’ve told you the second I broke up with someone!”

Lorelai shapes a W with her thumbs and index fingers.

“Yeah well, you have to date someone to break up with them so I guess we’ll see about that in a few years.”

Rory starts chewing on a red vine to avoid responding. Usually Loreali sticks to her possibly dysfunctional but at least loyal view that if her daughter wants to live like a nun the choice is hers, and who would dream of reproaching her for that? Lane asked her about cute guys for the first months at Yale. Finally Rory caved and told the story about Trevor and the urine mints, and after that her best friend let the subject be. Paris is increasingly frustrated with her refusal to do more than the occasional first date, seeing as she’s on her second lover, and probably wants someone to compare and contrast with, but Paris is always pissed, so it’s easy to ignore. What’s getting harder to handle by the day is her grandmother. Emily’s sick of her lack of social life, but has so far let it go when Rory has pointed out that Richard Gilmore didn’t date his first year at Yale, especially if he’s present, because then he’s quick to agree, putting an end to the whole thing. But it’s like she’s gotten immune to that tactic now, she’s started asking over the phone for one thing, and Kick and Mickey have started inviting her out, most likely courtesy of Emily’s influence. She’d be impressed if she wasn’t so busy defending herself.

“Speaking of which, how was spring break?”

“Fine.” 

Fine weather, and that’s about it. It says something about a person when their favorite part of spring break was eating pizza and watching The Power of Myth with her angry friend in their room. All she wound up doing outside of that was flirt with some undeserving guy and getting too drunk. Sure, it was fun running into Madeleine and Louise but the one track minds on them still means she winds up discussing things she’s uncomfortable with. They asked about Dean, and she told them the truth, that she doesn’t know about him anymore, he saved his money, went to community college in Hartford, got a place there, gives her the stink eye every time they run into each other on the holidays. Not that she doesn’t deserve it. She could take the first step to try to rectify it, but she knows it’s a slippery slope. All in all it just seems so unworth it, the hassle, the compromises, going through an entire relationship, just to wind up acting like strangers. How does her mother have the stomach to do that over and over again?

“Luke’s tomorrow?” She asks, to end her own train of thought.

Lorelai shakes her head.

“Oh no, we can’t go into town, there are fifty-nine easter eggs left over from the hunt that’s rotting around the square.”

“Goodness! What’s being done?”

“Kirk is on it.”

“Yikes.”

Eventually Lorelai goes to bed and Rory stays up studying, it’s almost light out before she goes to bed. It’s not like she has time to date anyway. Her workload is deemed too heavy by the experts, she needs her time to herself, her brain to herself. She falls asleep as her mother makes her way down the stairs for another day of working on bringing the Dragonfly into existence. 

When Rory wakes up the house is empty, so she drives back to Yale, where she hopes the soporific collective hang-over mixed with angst over all the papers and all the exams will make for a pretty decent study environment. She drives Dean’s car, the car Dean built for her. Her reminder. What was it meant to remind her of again? Part of her wishes it would break down, but it’s only given her trouble once, and that was in Stars Hollow with Gypsy within reach, who looked at it fondly, claiming there’s no one who knew it like she did.

On Thursday Lorelai calls her in a panic, having found out that Jason and his parents are attending Friday Night Dinner, insisting she gear up, whatever that’s supposed to mean. And when she arrives at the house in Hartford the next day, Lorelai runs out in the street before she has time to pull into the driveway.

“What is this? A landing strip?” She howls at her mother.

“I need you to park out of sight.”

“What? Why?” 

“If we came here together then I’ll have to leave early, when you do, for your early morning tomorrow, you poor thing. And we can’t get blocked in, we have to have the ability to leave as easily as possible.”

“Loony lady.” Rory mutters.

“I saw some free spaces two blocks from here.” Lorelai says.

Rory sighs, but does as she’s told, she can somehow, kind of, understand where Lorelai’s coming from.

“Did you gear up?” Lorelai asks as they’re waiting for the maid to answer the door at least ten minutes later.

“Do I look like I’m wearing camo?”

“I meant emotionally.”

“I guess.”

“Don’t you realize what we’re walking into?”

“Bracing myself as we speak.”

Of course, it turns out most of the horribleness is in her mother’s head, heart. Not that that’s not bad enough sometimes, but she has nothing to complain over other than the social interaction being a bit dull, dealing exclusively with walks down memory lane and business. Rory stays close, and accepts being treated a bit more like prop than usual. Jason is nothing but professional, and you only notice it if you know it’s there: the absence of something, snark, her mother’s brand of backhanded flirting, and the fact that Jason seems just a bit defeated, but that could just as easily be tributed to the presence of his parents. Rory feels bad for him. 

After dinner Lorelai uses their excuse and they leave. Lorelai ushers Rory into the jeep and drives her to her car. She stops behind it and turns off the engine.

“That went well.” Rory tries.

“The evening’s not over yet.” Lorelai says. “But hey, in other, better news, the town square is once more habitable, so we’ll be able to go to Luke’s the next time you’re back home.”

“Kirk actually came through?”

Lorelai smiles.

“What?”

“Seems Kirk had a little help finding the last twelve eggs.”

“By whom?”

“Well, that’s the thing, no one knows anything except that Kirk was tearing his hair out trying to find those eggs and Taylor was gonna cancel the flower show because of it, but didn’t because, get this; someone located the missing eggs-”

“Well, that’s good-”

“-And hid them in his backyard!”

“Taylor’s?”

“Yup!”

“Bizarre!”

“And that’s not all.”

“No?”

“Uh-uh.”

“What?” 

“Luke’s been acting strange.”

“Not Luke!”

“Uh-huh. First he left town for three whole days without so much as a gone fishin’!”

“No!”

“And then Miss Patty said she’d seen Luke move in a spare bed to the apartment! That tiny apartment!”

“Maybe he’s gotten a girlfriend.”

Lorelai gasps.

“First of all: Hush! Secondly: His girlfriend is gonna move in and sleep in a separate bed in his teensy apartment?”

“Well, I’m just spitballing here, man! How could you not know? Your main food provider is acting erratically and you’re not finding out why?”

“I am trying, but I have no time, zero, on my hands, nor the brainpower for this. I just broke up with someone you know.” Lorelai sticks out the lower lip, Rory sighs.

It’s not until she’s back at Yale that she realizes she’s left her phone. She calls her mother the next day. Lorelai picks up and she hears Luke’s voice in the background showing her mother the door. 

“You’re at Luke’s!” She exclaims.

“Technically outside of Luke’s.”

“Well, what did you find out?”

“You’ll never believe what happened after we left on Friday!”

“At Luke’s?”

“At my parents!”

Lorelai launches into such a vivid description of what happened between the Stiles and the Gilmores that you’d think she was there. Rory’s about to offer her condoleances when she thinks of something. 

“And how do you know any of this?”

“He called.”

“Jason.”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.”

“Oh?”

“I didn’t know you talked.”

“We don’t. He called. Apparently his father had him followed.”

“That’s wild, is his last name Ewing?”

“Right? And he wanted to give me a heads up since the PI might have seen us together. Oh, that’s my phone- Hi, Jason!”

“Your life is bonkers, are you sure your last name isn’t Carrington?” Rory exclaims.

“You don’t know the half of it, Luke is feeding me a jelly donut as we speak ‘cause my hands are busy with the phones. No, I’m not talking to you Jason-” There’s a pause, some muffled sounds. “I should go.” 

“You think? Bye.”

“Bye, honey! No, not you-”

It’s not that she dislikes Jason, it’s that he may be a bit too similar to Lorelai. Same world, same wit, same neurosises, same compartmentalizing. Given enough time together they would certainly come to live together in the most complex system imaginable, suited specifically for them and no one else. Fuel each other's fires with no one to stop it if they got out of hand.

She knows love’s not simple per se, the mere odds of it just coming to pass seem impossible when you think about it, but she’s pretty sure that it should feel like the obvious choice to make, and that it shouldn’t get compromised away, painted into a corner, or twisted into something for everyone else rather than the people in it. She knows that. Seems pretty clear from all the books she’s read. Unfortunately studying something and experiencing it are apparently two different things, even her own limited experiences partly disproves her theoretical knowledge.

When Paris asks her to come to Asher Fleming’s reading she reluctantly does. The whole thing is painful. Firstly, she’s not convinced that Fleming is as great an author as everyone seems to think, but watching Paris fidget in her seat and wonder about his feelings for her, is worse. Paris may be the friend that drives her nuts most frequently, and Rory might even have labeled her an enemy as late as a year ago, but she really is a wise, willful and wonderful woman, and she deserves better than vague anonymous dedications that could refer to any one of numerous girlfriends of a college professor who really should know better. Paris deserves better than a secret relationship. 

Back in her room Rory’s torn between her schoolwork, the noise upstairs, and her thoughts. Her mom broke up with Jason, without her grandparents even knowing there was something to end, and if a secret relationship falls in the forest did it really exist at all? Rory didn’t just break up with Dean, there were other factors, but in simplified terms, she dumped him over a kiss, and now she’s starting to wonder if that was even real. It’s gonna fade further, and it might’ve happened, but it’ll be like it hasn’t. Is that why people insist on telling their friends about their dreams? Not to make them real, ‘cause you can’t, but to make what they did to you real; My brain told me a story with me in the starring role and it made me feel something. I dreamt I went to New York and met my soulmate and he kissed me so soft it made me believe, he kissed me so hard it woke me up. 

There’s a knock on the door. Rory blinks, catches her breath, gets up to open the door: Lorelai. She hands her the phone, and walks into the dorm room.

“I had to pick up hinges and doorknobs and faucets.” Lorelai sits down on the couch.

Rory follows and sits next to her.

“Wow. But you could have just given it to me at Friday night dinner.”

Lorelai makes a sound. 

“You're not going to Friday night dinner.” Rory squints at her. “What did Jason want earlier?”

Lorelai sighs.

“Dad is going after him, and...it's complicated but it's really bad. He called me asking that I talk to dad and, I tried but I couldn’t get him to budge on anything, and he basically told me to mind my own business, he doesn’t listen to anyone, and just, sitting there pretending everything is okay, when he’s behaving so badly-”

“You know, some people might argue that once you break up with someone their life is no longer your responsibility.”

“But this is like basic human decency.”

“And Richard Gilmore is not known primarily for that. Some people might argue that this is you looking to pick a fight with grandpa.”

“Some people?”

“Me.”

“Rory!”

“Mom! You can’t claim that’s not your default. But it's really important to me that you don't back out of Friday night dinners. They're the only time that the whole family gets together. Sometimes it's the only time that I get to see you, and I like having it there. It's really important to me.”

Lorelai frowns.

“But I don’t wanna.”

“Tough.”

Lorelai pouts. Rory smiles.

“Did Luke really feed you a donut while you were on two phones?”

Just like that, her mother smiles too.

“What can I say? He’s crazy about me.”

“Has to be. So, are things back back to normal at the diner?”

“No way, and I’m starting to feel like I’m losing my sanity-”

“Just now?”

“-I went there after work yesterday, Luke wasn’t there but you know who was?”

“Who?”

“No idea!” 

“Helpful.”

“This young guy I’ve never seen around, serving coffee like it was nothing!” 

“New guy?”

“New guy.”

“To the town or Luke’s?”

“I’ve never seen him before, that’s for sure. And he had a black eye!”

“Oh! Dangerous.”

“Yeah, Taylor was upset about it.”

Rory laughs.

“Fun for everyone. Didn’t you ask for his name?”

Lorelai snorts.

“Rude! Plus, he didn’t have the best people skills, if I didn’t know better I’d say it was Luke himself twenty years younger.”

“Get a hold of yourself woman! You didn’t ask Luke this morning?”

“I was busy, as you might remember!”

Rory shakes her head.

“I can’t believe Luke has a boyfriend!”

“First of all double-hush!” Lorelai slaps her hand. “Secondly, cradle-robbing! Thirdly, a boyfriend sleeping in a separate bed!? You get a hold of yourself!”

“Stop questioning me and get Nancy Drewing like you’re supposed to!”

“I do not, I repeat I do not have the time!”

“Well, delegate! You have at least two very willing minions to do snooping for you. So you’re coming on Friday.”

Lorelai gasps at her surprise attack, glares at her for a few seconds before giving up.

“Fine.”

Friday night arrives and one of the most surreal gatherings they’ve ever experienced comes to pass. 

“What the hell was that?”

“I’m not saying that was the weirdest dinner ever, but it’s a contender.”

Lorelai seems completely shook by the idea that Emily isn’t sleeping in the house, and even though Rory is surprised there’s sort of a weird familiarity to it. Her grandpa has been dismissing her grandma for the better part of a year and it’s not like Emily Gilmore to take it lying down, no matter how dedicated she is to her marriage. But first two secret relationships in Rory’s immediate proximity, and now a secret separation. Is there a single grown-up in the entire world? Rory stands beside her mother, waiting for her to get it together. When she does Rory walks her to her car. Lorelai is quiet, so Rory does what she can to take her mind off things.

“So, what have the flying monkeys reported?”

Something in Lorelai’s face changes and in an instance she’s back, smiling.

“Well, I conferred with them, and Babette said it’s Luke’s nephew.”

“The new guy?”

“Or possibly niece, because he had a girl’s name.”

“A boy named Sue. Anything else?”

Lorelai frowns.

“No. But I was in a hurry, and she said she was working on obtaining more information.”

“Good.”

“So, what are you doing tonight? Writing three papers?”

“No! I do have a life!” Rory says a little louder than she intends. “Actually, since we’re early we can make Lane’s gig! Coming?”

“I can’t! I have-”

“A thousand things to do. Sorry.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Rory gets into her car and drives, arrives and enters in time for the encores. She waves at Lane who makes her way to her as soon as the gig is over. She flings her arms around Rory and forces her into a pogo hop.

“I’m so happy you’re here!” She squeals. “I was starting to feel abandoned. First Luke hands a bunch of shifts to his nephew, then my mom gets a replacement daughter.”

Rory pulls back but keeps her hold on Lane.

“Your mom got a what now?”

“I’m probably overreacting.”

Rory tilts her head.

“Probably.” She starts slowly, to determine how real Lane’s distress is. “You’re probably missing her, that’s normal.”

“It would be right? I just did not see it coming.”

Rory pats her head.

“I get that too.” 

They get sodas and head off a bit to the side of the room, finding a bar table. Rory remembers Lorelai and that she, her daughter, possibly, probably could be counted as a minion in this particular instance when she has a first hand source within reach. 

“Have you met the nephew?” She asks.

“Just in passing. Our shifts don’t mash, and I’ve been busy rehearsing. Luke seems pleased though. Why d’you ask?”

“No real reason, just asking for my mom, it was driving her nuts.”

Lane laughs.

“Of course. You know, the way those two are up in each other’s business-”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“You ever talk to her about it?”

“Not really, I wouldn’t dare be the instigator, you never know how her relationships are gonna end up.”

“Yeah. She broke up with someone, right?”

“A while ago actually.” 

Lane nods as she processes this.

“Lately though, I could swear he’s been…” She frowns, like she can’t find the word.

“Been what?”

“Leaning into something when she’s around, just, pauses.”

Luke and her mom. It seems dangerous, but different from any relationship prior. Luke would be happy, she knows that, her mother… amazingly it’s harder to tell, Lorelai has always had a chaotic, even self-destructive streak, that’s made Rory anxious, even if she’s aware that she occasionally takes after it. She remembers the Cheshirecat Inn and how it felt to fall asleep there, lost and hungry; She frequently claims to be on her way toward adventure, but that feeling wasn’t nice. Maybe it’ll be different when it’s your own decision, your own adventure that’s put you there. That’s why she can’t, shouldn’t, become Lorelai Gilmore, or Christine Amanpour, or any person that isn’t her. Not as a career, and not as a person.

She puts an arm around Lane.

“You could look at this thing with your mom from another angle, you know-” She sips her soda.

“And which one is that?”

“That she has a void to fill. She probably misses you a lot.” 

Lane looks off in the distance, seemingly considering it. 

“Thanks.” She mumbles, and smiles, a tad bleakly.

“It won’t work.” Rory hurries to reassure her. “You can’t fill the void of one person with another just like that.” Why would you wanna be someone else anyway? “Especially not someone as awesome as you.” She adds. 

Lane chuckles, squeezes her arm back. Rory tries to shake the echo of the year old conversation in New York. She’s starting to wonder if that was even real. It’s gonna fade further, and it might’ve happened, but it’ll be like it hasn’t. 

“Lane-” She starts before she has a chance to change her mind. “Remember me skipping school to go to New York last year?”

Lane beams in recognition.

“Of course. You gave some cute guy your book.”

Rory only pauses an extra moment before speaking.

“I didn’t just distribute literature.”

Lane turns her face to her, expression pure delight. There’s no outrage, no resentment. Rory stares at her in disbelief.

“I kissed him.” She finishes, lamely.

Lane squeals excitedly.

“You’re not-” Rory squints at her. “-upset with me?”

“Why would I be upset with you?”

“I can think of a few reasons.”

Lane laughs, dismissively.

“I don’t need to know everything about you to be your friend, and you don’t need to be perfect to be mine.” She reaches over and pats her head. “Neat, huh?”

Rory smiles.

“Yeah, neat.”

“Now, however, you have to spill; Was it good?”

Rory takes a deep breath.

“Yeah.”

Lane’s smile widens, before pulling Rory out to the dance floor.

A few days later she arrives at the house in Stars Hollow for another movie night; It’s a bad idea, she has an exam the day after and has to leave early, but still does it, that is the riskiest behavior she engages in these days. She brought all the books she needs for studying, that’s the sad state of things when she can’t even do a movie night with her mother without getting some schoolwork in. Lorelai meets her in the driveway and follows her into the house while updating her on the latest news of the Inn.

“Everyone's freaking out because we got a million things to do, but we finally got the pictures up, and the beds were delivered today.”

“That’s good.”

Rory heads for her room to drop off her bag, but finds she can barely open the door. She leans her shoulder on it and shoves. It opens to the room which is an utter mess. She turns and glares at Lorelai.

“Funny story-”

“What’s going on with my room?”

“Your room is filled with bed linen.” Lorelai confirms.

“What have you done with my room?”

“I thought your room was on campus.”

“Mom!”

“Fine! I needed some place to store all the interior stuff for the Inn.”

Rory pushes the door to open it further and gasps.

“Where’s my bed?”

“Under there somewhere?”

“Where am I supposed to sleep?”

“With me?”

“How could you do this to my room?”

“I’ll put it back! Promise! I’ll return it to its pristine condition and offer compensation.”

Rory sighs sharply, but lets it go, drops her stuff in the kitchen instead and heads for the couch. They watch the movie and Lorelai brings her up to speed on her grandparents; indeed secretly separated, so don’t mention the war. And after it’s done Rory decides to drive back to New Haven, her room being in shambles anyhow. Lorelai tries arguing with her over it, but it’s clear she doesn’t have the gusto. Instead she gets a guilty look, followed by a sly one, and she disappears into Rory’s room and reemerges with a bag in her hand. She holds it out to Rory.

“Compensation!”

“What is this?”

“New books!”

Rory tilts her head but accepts the bag.

“Very cool, but mom, school year’s almost over. I’m packing up my place next week, no point in bringing new stuff there.”

“Fine, don’t bring them.” Lorelai shrugs.

She tries. But books. She sighs and closes her hand around the handle of the bag. She stomps her foot.

“Darnit.”

“Love you.” Lorelai laughs.

“Yeah yeah.”

The exam goes well, but she has a couple of courses left to finish and in the middle of it all Asher- professor Fleming, winds up in the hospital. Rory’s aversion towards him diminishes, but for Paris it almost seems the opposite is true. She tells her mother about it over the phone that night.

“Thank god!” Lorelai says. “Dating a professor is a rite of passage at best, not a lifestyle.”

Rory chuckles a little, relieved that someone gets her. Lorelai goes on:

“So, Luke’s nephew, I met him.”

“Yeah? What’s he like?”

“Alright, first you need to know that he’s Luke’s sister’s son, and that she’s getting married. How do I know this, you ask, since Luke is quiet as a clam about his family most of the time? I’ll tell you; ‘cause he invited me to go with him to the wedding!”

Rory nearly gasps.

“Like a date?”

“I’m not ruling it out.”

“Wow! Are we happy about this?”

“I’m not ruling it out!”

“And his nephew?”

“Is here for the wedding, and he’s walking his mother down the aisle.”

“Cute.”

“Yeah, especially since they don’t have that great a relationship from what Luke told me.”

Rory smiles broadly.

“Luke told you.”

Lorelai laughs.

“Yeah, total freakshow over here. But that’s not even the best part.”

“What’s the best part?”

“Remember the bit about the eggs?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, Luke also told me that he and nephew decided to help Kirk out with the very disgusting easter egg hunt and they found all of ‘em, Luke gave ‘em to nephew to throw away and-”

“And they turned up in Taylor’s yard.” Rory finishes, pleased with herself.

“I haven’t even exchanged more than coffee orders with the guy and he’s already my new favorite person.”

Rory shakes her head.

“I can’t believe I’m missing all of this.”

“You’ll catch him next weekend!”

“No I won’t! I’m having a final exam on Saturday!”

“What! No! Are they allowed to do that?”

“Apparently.”

“That sucks.”

“It does. I’m counting on you to provide a very detailed description of the events though. You’re my only hope.”

“On it gold leader.” 

When they hang up she almost feels giddy. So strange. Luke asked her mother out. She’s almost scared to consider it. Because it fits, she decides. It would be so easy to fall into it. To get things mixed up. She’s getting really tired of all this compartmentalizing, the idea of fences, some arbitrary order. And for what? It’s never worked before, it’s never offered any actual protection. 

Friday arrives and the dreaded Saturday morning Philosophy exam nears. Rory says goodbye to her roommates who are all leaving in their different directions. Paris makes fun of Tana and Chester but Rory finds herself thinking it’s sweet; To have someone like that, to have someone in such a way, who gets you like that. It wouldn’t really matter what other people thought of you. It offers a nice antidote to the Gilmore house where she and her mother play along with her grandparents’ farce later that night, which they, granted, have improved since last week, primarily by removing Richard from the equation all together. 

Well back in her empty dorm room she keeps thinking about Tana’s collage. So stupid. Her being on her own is not news. Why does she feel it now? Because Emily was snooping around her personal life and Lorelai wasn’t far behind. Because Paris tried setting her up with Asher’s son. Jeez. What is the opposite of being on fire? Her bedroom door is open, no use in closing it now. She still gets up and shuts it. She goes back to bed and stares into the slightly more enclosed space. Alone, though. Maybe she’ll grow stuck that way, untangled from anyone, except her mother. She decisively shakes the thought, closes her eyes and goes to sleep from sheer will power.

The final comes too, and goes, and goes great. Who needs to be pretty, who needs a boyfriend when you can get an A? She’s relieved when packing up, drinking her disgusting drink. 

But then, the last straw: Her grandma appears, and tries to set her up with some guy. Named Graham. God. It’s finally painfully obvious what her mother feels every time Emily gets involved. And sure the guy is cute and all, and doesn’t seem too slow, but is obviously in the same situation she is, and as nice as it is to have things in common with other people, this really isn’t appealing. 

It’s just so weird. You see someone you think is cute, or seems interesting, and find out if they think that about you. If they do you set up an appointment, best possible circumstances, a place, a time reserved for the two of you, you both show up, and still you have to struggle to find something in common. It’s so weird. You get together with someone, it’s a relationship. You’ve overcome the massive barrier that is the start of a relationship and made it into one. The odds are completely insane. Then it ends and turns into nothing. A lesson, a reminder, no more. It is and then it isn’t. Just as cracked. Meanwhile she can walk into a random café in Manhattan and meet someone so decidedly for her.

But then again. The last straw. People see her as lonely and now she feels it too. So, she agrees to go, so she won’t grow stuck that way, but there’s a resignation to it that really has her wondering if she should. 

She finishes packing, and then just kind of sits around. Her boxes are by the door. She’ll bring them back to Stars Hollow tomorrow and she’ll need help with the mattress. That’ll be Luke. She smiles a little. But not tonight, because tonight he’s taking her mother to his sister’s wedding. She goes for a walk around campus while the sun sets. She changes into a different outfit, a short brown skirt and matching jacket, playful t-shirt underneath, simple sneakers on her feet. It’s about time to call Graham but she stalls. She goes back to the room, and sits on her bed. The clock is ticking. She picks up her phone and looks at it as well as the note with Graham’s and Leonard Fleming’s numbers. 

Maybe she’ll read a book. All her boxes are taped together. Her eyes fall on the bag her mother gave her last week which she hasn’t had an opportunity to look through. She carries it to the bed, sits down and opens it.

She lifts up the stack to inspect it closer: A copy of Howl, a worn copy of some punk biography, Running with Scissors, To have or to have not- she stops and sighs- one of Palahniuk’s, Atonement and The Bell Jar. She picks the books up one at a time to look closer. Plath and Hemingway are old library books, and she freezes as a memory of a detail rises like a bubble. She feels dizzy and moves on to the modern books, browses their pages. For new books they are distinctly worn, pages dogeared and occasionally torn, the margins filled with hand-written notes- She feels out of breath and she lets go of the open book in her hand like it’s hurting her. 

She picks up Howl, and notices her hand is shaking. She feels like she knows without knowing why, her body is quicker than her head. The pages are clean, pristine when she flicks them between her fingers, not like the other books. Maybe it’s because of the Saturday Orphans that she opens the book to Wild Orphan. She strokes a finger down the paper. There’s a name, and a number in scribbly, but decisive blue ink. She stares at it unable to take it in and her vision blurs. She opens the binder, and her own name is there, neatly printed in capital letters. There’s a sound, and she jerks and drops the book before realising that it’s she herself who’s squealed out loud. 

It’s her old copy. The copy she left in the coffee shop a year ago. She makes another sound vaguely like a question. She picks up the book again to make sure she’s not imagining it. Her name, her number, in the binder. It’s the same copy. She browses back to Wild Orphan and stares at the name, the number for a few seconds. Jess. Before she knows what she’s doing she picks out her cell phone and pushes the numbers. When she puts the phone to her ear her mouth gets dry. What is she doing? She tries putting away the phone but her hand won’t let it go. After the third signal, there’s a pause and a click as she’s put through to an answering machine. A hoarse, but humorous female voice starts speaking on the other end.

“Hi! You’ve reached Lady Elizabeth, the broad and the brand, I can’t pick up right now but if you leave a message I promise you I’ll get back to ya.” 

There’s a click and a beep, sharp, in comparison to the softness of the voice. Rory almost drops the phone, but clings to what little composure she has and disconnects the call before letting it fall onto her bed where it knocks against the books. 

The disappointment is stronger than anything she’s felt for a long time. She hesitates before picking up Howl once more, checking for a third time that she hasn’t in fact lost her mind. It’s there, it’s true, but the rest of the world won’t bend its shape around this one real book. Her heart beats hard. Her mother gave her these. How did she get them? 

She picks up the phone again and calls Lorelai. No one answers. Of course. Lorelai is at the wedding, her date with Luke. And Rory’s going out with the orphans, with Graham tonight. She and her mother will catch up first thing tomorrow. Maybe. They’ve mismanaged their communication these last weeks. Rory forces herself to sit down, but feels dizzy, like she might throw up from the lack of movement. 

She gets up and grabs the car key from her bag, gets as far as the door before stopping and leaning on it. It’s so weird. Your grandma sees someone she thinks is cute. Your grandma sets up an appointment, best possible circumstances, a place, a time reserved for the two of you, you both show up. She clenches her jaws. Screw it. She walks back into the bedroom, grabs the book from the bed and walks out the front door. The rest of the stuff will have to get picked up tomorrow, she has to talk to Lorelai now.

She lopes all the way to the car, which is parked quite a distance from her dorm. She has time to think how this is madness, so why can’t she stop, turn, go back? But her body overrides all concerns she’s able to put into reasonable words, and all that’s left is her desperate need to know about the books, and the panic over the year that has passed. 

She drives too fast for it. The car does not agree with this. It holds up for short, slow trips, on a steady schedule, and this seems to fit none of those criteria. She’s just past Hartford when a violent tremor runs through the vehicle leaving it still and quiet.

“No!” Rory hoots to herself, hitting the steering wheel in frustration before getting it together and turning it so that she’s heading for the curb.

The car glides through the night for another hundred yards and comes to a full stop.

“Fuck.” She whispers. 

It’s too far to walk. She picks up her phone and calls her mother again. Three signals and she’s just given up hope when the call goes through. It’s noisy on the other end and for a few seconds she thinks her mother might have picked up by accident. But then her breath is audible and her voice, happy, thunders through.

“Hi honey!”

“Mom!” Rory can’t keep urgency from her voice despite trying.

“Rory?” Lorelai is sober in a second. 

“I’m sorry. I’m kinda stuck and I didn’t know who else to call.”

“What’s going on?”

“Where did you get the books?”

“The books?”

“You gave me a bag of books? Where did you get ‘em?”

“Are you sure this is an emergency?”

“Mom!”

“I got ‘em from Luke! He got ‘em from his sister!”

“The one getting married.”

“Yeah, Liz.”

What the hell is going on? There is something too big and obvious for her to wrap her head around staring her in the face. Rory groans in frustration.

“Rory, what’s happened?”

She needs to talk to Lorelai, needs to talk to Liz too, apparently, however she’ll swing that without coming off as a complete nutjob. Rory swallows the whole thing temporarily, it’ll have to wait. She regains what’s left of her composure.

“My car broke down outside Hartford, I can’t get outta here, I need help.”

There’s silence on the other end for a few seconds, then a sigh.

“Where exactly are you?” 

“About a mile from Woodbridge.” Rory says, lowly, embarrassed.

“Hold on.” Lorelai says.

There’s a shuffle as she presumably squeezes the phone between her neck and shoulder and Rory hears her muffled voice as she confers with someone, likely Luke. Seconds pass. She has time to think about the absurdity of this, how easily it could have been avoided, even what Graham is thinking right about now, probably how he dodged a bullet, and what Emily will say when she finds out, but the shame still can’t quell her panic-ridden head fervently trying to make sense of this whole thing. Then Lorelai’s voice comes back on the line.

“Hang tight for twenty minutes, we’re on it.” She hangs up.

Rory gets out of the car and stands next to it, phone in hand for a little while. Then she gets back into the car and tries to settle in for a wait. She picks up Howl, and puts one finger inside the binder and another to Wild Orphan. She flips between the two repeatedly. She’s not making this up. She stops after a few minutes though as everything catches up with her:

Lady Elizabeth, sounds like a medium or escort service, maybe it was the wrong number to begin with, a prank. She tries clinging to that explanation, she’s used to that strategy, but she can’t stop a stronger idea; that he’s long gone from that number, he knew the time tables, he was going away. No matter if she manages to trace the book back to its origin it might very well be too late, for a number of reasons, and here she is, on a dark highway, waiting for her mother to come tow her home because she couldn’t keep herself under control. 

The road is almost empty, just a few cars pass her while she waits, and then, headlights approach, slowing the closer they get. Luke’s truck, Luke, who’s had to interrupt the date. The vehicle does a u-turn and backs up close to the front of her car. She ruefully puts the book down and gets out ready to apologize. But it’s not Luke who steps out of the truck.

There were times during the past year she was sure she’d forgotten what he looked like, it was what he felt like she couldn’t shake. It’s dark, but her headlights are on half light to alert other cars of her presence, and the rays fall on his face. He squints at the light. For a second she thinks she’s gonna faint, then he speaks, tethering her to reality, surreal as it may be.

“You Lorelai’s daughter?” 

She gapes, tries to answer but can’t make a sound.

“I’m Luke’s nephew-” His voice loses momentum with each word, he holds up a hand to see and he stops moving too.

“Jess.” She finishes in sync with him, her voice barely a whisper. 

Luke’s nephew, Liz’s son, the one with the girl’s name. Her Jess; His chest rises in a sudden breath.

“Rory?” His voice is low, hesitant, like he’s scared to speak.

“Yes.” She manages, and thinks that it’s good that that’s also his name, two birds, one stone.

He takes another few steps and they stand a couple feet apart. His gaze darts across her face, between her eyes, and finally coming to rest there. His mouth, slightly open, broadens into a smile, and a sudden gust of breath is a quiet laugh. She feels torn in two, she smiles, but feels like crying, this has to be a dream, for all the wish fulfillment, it can’t be real, any second she’ll wake up. She blinks decisively and bites her lower lip; It changes nothing, she still smells the exhaust fumes in the evening air, feels the breeze, hears his breath. 

She opens her eyes and breathes, her exhale turns into a word.

“How?”

Without breaking eye contact he responds, words evenly paced, tone a little absent, like he’s busy.

“I’ve been staying with Luke for a while, Liz- my mom was gonna get- she got married tonight and I was about to leave, go back to- when I saw Luke heading for the diner and-”

“You offered to-”

He nods.

“Seemed important they didn’t-”

“-get interrupted.” She smiles at him, intentionally this time.

“Yeah.” He smiles back, then opens his mouth just to take a breath.

She wants to speak, to know how this is possible. She wants to tell him about the book, but it’s too big, too incomprehensible. And looking at him, seeing him there, she wants to touch him, to make sure he’s real, because she’s still not convinced, but she has no idea, none, how her fingers on him would turn out. And she takes too long anyway, because he weighs between his feet and gestures to the truck.

“I should-”

“Yes.” She says again, not yeah, but yes.

He gets a rope from the back of the truck and gets on the ground to fasten it under her front bumper. She stands awkwardly next to him, looking at his hands, his neck, him frowning from concentration. He glances up at her and away, smiling politely when he finds her looking. She gets goosebumps even in the warm night air when she realizes she’s barelegged. She can’t move though, will probably fall over if she tries. Her breath hitches in her throat and she opens her mouth to be able to breathe easier. He finishes fastening the rope and looks up at her, locking his eyes in hers. He smiles openly, or maybe it’s just the angle of his face, but she returns it anyway, dazed.

“Cool car.”

“Dean built it.”

He blinks, mouth shaping an o. She bites her lip until it hurts. He gets up, brushing the road dust from his pants, then heading over to the rear of the truck to fasten the rope in its hook. He turns to her, nods.

“You ready?”

She nods despite being nowhere in the vicinity of ready. He walks toward the truck’s front doors but stops when she follows. He tilts his head.

“You need to-” He gestures at her car.

Her face starts burning.

“-Steer. Of course. Sorry, I-” She doesn’t finish, but promptly turns and gets into her car.

Great. She’s an idiot. She starts mumbling loudly to herself to forget just how much of an idiot she is. Not only does she bring up her ex within minutes of seeing him, but she doesn’t even have the most basic understanding of practical logistics. He gets into the truck and there’s a jerk as it pulls her car into motion. 

The drive is slow. What would normally have been ten minutes doubles. It’s expected, but painful under the circumstances. It all floods back into her, how she felt a year ago when he didn’t call. Why does she have the book? Because Jess is Luke’s nephew, Lorelai got the books from Luke, Luke got them from his sister, Liz, Jess’s mother, who has books disappearing under mysterious circumstances. Too mysterious. Too many unknown variables still.

Her sense of desperation increases the closer they get to Stars Hollow, and her heartbeat is wild in her chest when they stop outside her and her mother’s house. She remains in the driver’s seat for fear that her legs won’t carry her. Jess gets out of the truck and tentatively walks up to her door. She awkwardly rolls down the window.

“This okay?” Jess asks. “I wasn’t sure you were taking it to Gypsy, and she’s not open tonight anyway.”

She nods dumbly.

“I could help you get it there tomorrow if you want?” He offers.

“I thought you were leaving. Weren’t you just about to-?”

He looks away, shrugs.

“Yeah, but it seems too late now. And-” He falls silent, and opens the door to let her out.

She can’t move, just stays in her seat.

“Have you been good to yourself?” She asks, wondering as the words come where she gets the courage.

He looks stunned for a second, then the recognition glimmers in his eyes.

“Not exactly.” He shrugs, smiles a little. “Not as good as I could have been, I guess.”

He gets quiet and glances back at her, looking a bit embarrassed. It’s now. It has to be now.

“Why didn’t you call?”

He frowns, dead serious at once.

“How would I have called?”

She stares at the passenger seat where her copy of Howl lays. She reaches over and takes it, then gets out of the car in one swift motion, suddenly very able bodied. She opens the book to Wild Orphan and hands it to Jess. He takes the book from her and stares at the page, for seconds, obviously unable to process what it means that his name and number is in the margin. While he frowns at it, she slams the car door shut, and crosses her arms. She gives him a moment, but when he’s unable to produce any response to the thing in his hands, she starts talking.

“I lied to you, Jess. I told you I believed in fate. That it would magically bring us back together. But I wasn’t trusting some supreme power.”

He looks up at her, all confusion. She stomps her foot and takes a step closer, opening the book to the binder, tapping her finger at her neatly printed information. 

“I left that for you.” She says, something accusing in her tone, that she can’t really control.

He swallows.

“So why do I have this?” She asks.

He stares at the book.

“Jess?”

“I don’t know.” He mumbles.

She sighs sharply, shaking her head. She reaches and takes the book from him. None of this makes any sense. She opens the car door again and tosses the book inside. When she turns back Jess takes one decisive step closer to her, so she ends up leaning on the car.

“What do you want me to say?”

His voice is low enough, but his lower lip trembles, and she stares at it. 

“Everything I could possibly say would sound crazy.” His voice is low, jarred.

She tears her gaze away from his mouth and looks at his eyes. They’re different now: serious, dark, lost. 

“I think crazy might be the only game in town. Try me.”

He swallows, looks at his feet.

“There was this girl a while back-” He starts and Rory twitches where she stands. “I needed to get her off my back, so I told her I was bad luck.” 

Rory squints at him, his chest rises and falls in a breath, before he goes on.

“And I believed it too.” He shakes his head. “Maybe I felt I cashed in all my luck meeting you that one time because without it…” He finally looks back at her and she remembers to breathe. “I’ve been better to myself than I would've been if we hadn’t met. I finished school. And I never worked another shift at Gloria’s.” 

Her mouth goes slack, all indignation running off her.

“Oh.”

He presses his lips together, and puts some space between them again.

“We should catch up.” She blurts.

He exhales, smiles.

“Yeah.”

She smiles back, too broadly, and gestures vaguely towards the town centre.

“I should talk to my mom first though.”

“Yeah, of course.” He steps back further to let her pass.

She steps away from the car, her legs holding her up and all. She looks down at them, and her casual date outfit, and tries puzzling it together with a wedding setting.

“I have to change.”

He chuckles.

“You really don’t. Have you ever been to a ren faire wedding?”

“Why? How many have you been to?”

He raises his eyebrows and gives out a surprised laugh which she matches, delighted. 

“It’s my first.” He admits.

She points at the house.

“I’m gonna change.” 

“Want me- Should I wait?”

She nods. 

“Come in.”

He follows her up the porch and in through the door, halts in the hall.

“I’ll just be a minute.” She says.

“Take your time.”

She walks into her room. Lorelai has fixed it up, just like she promised; It’s mostly in order, the bed is made with a new bedspread. There’s a full figure mirror mounted on the inside of the door. Her bookshelves have been dusted. Rory shuts the door, but leaves a small crack, and remains by it, waiting for her heartbeat to slow. After about a minute she hears him enter the kitchen. 

“So what do you think of the guy?” She croaks, clearing her throat and clarifies: “That your mother married, I mean?”

“Uhm-” He starts. “Not really in a position to have an opinion.” 

His voice is unnaturally light, but she’s relieved, it’s easier talking to him when he can’t see her, when she’s not distracted by his face. She keeps her eyes on the familiar backs of her books, letting her mind reach, listening for his response. There’s a creak from the floor boards, him shifting his weight or taking a step. A few moments pass, when he speaks again he sounds more like himself, there’s humor in his voice, like he’s smiling. 

“But Luke insists he’s kind and seems to think that’s a primary virtue.”

She smiles.

“I agree with Luke.” She says.

Apparently the door separating them also helps her handle the pauses between lines, it doesn’t feel like awkwardness but more like a summer night, full of something. That finally pushes her into action. She pulls off her jacket and t-shirt, steps out of her skirt, tossing them on the bed. 

“Speaking of which-” He starts, falling instantly quiet.

She freezes where she stands, waiting for more. His steps approach her door and she tiptoes back to it as quickly as she can to be able to close it, she’s in her underwear.

“Are you still with-?” He mumbles, his voice comes through the crack in the door like he’s standing right next to her.

“The jerk?” She finishes for him.

There’s a little sound, a breath, a laugh.

“Right. Dean.”

She leans on the door, the glass of the mirror cold on her skin,and takes a breath that leaves fog on its surface.

“No.”

The silence is silky.

“When did that happen?” He asks.

Of course he would ask, of course she should answer, seems dishonest not to. She was honest with him back then too, even if she wasn’t with anyone else. She kissed him at the station, and then got on a bus and left. That sequence was overt, no matter the subtext, his intentions, her hopes, the book. 

“Pretty soon after I got back from New York.” She says.

It’s silent again, and she lets it be for a while. She’s read enough, seen enough to know that actions that are morally wrong are able to be true and real, even outside consequence and permanence. They talked, told each other things they hadn’t told anyone else. 

She clears her throat.

“Let’s see. What do you wear to crash a ren faire wedding?” She jokes, shaking the subject by heading for her closet.

“Do you own a bodice?” He says laughter in his voice.

Her skin prickles.

“A lady never tells.” 

She finds the clothes she’s left here freshly organised too, stuff she hasn’t seen in years, stuff that’s been lost in her mother’s wardrobe. She finds a thin, sleeveless white top and grabs a quilted wrap-skirt she hasn’t worn for two seasons. 

It’s quiet, she suddenly notices. Her heartbeat picks up.

“Jess? You still there?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry, it’s just… so strange.” She admits, blushing, and is happy he can’t see.

“Yeah. Rory?”

“Yes?”

“I don’t know how this happened, but I’m happy it did, not that that stupid word covers it.”

She smiles from the sensation of his words. Maybe it is all a dream, but in that case she’s going to enjoy it. She ties the skirt around her waist, pulling her black velvet jacket off its hanger. She glances in the mirror, her own shining eyes looking back at her, her cheeks pink. 

She opens the door. He’s standing by the coffee maker, and smiles, a little dazed smile when he sees her. She walks toward him and he doesn’t move. She stops a couple of inches from him. His eyes climb her and her new outfit and her heartbeat gets hard again. 

“You cut your hair.” He says.

She just then notices his is longer than when they met, it’s dark and wild, even if he’s clearly tried combing it, maybe with water, or some kind of product to keep it in place for the occasion. It still wilfully sticks out in a number of directions.

“You didn’t.” She reaches out and puts a few stray strands behind his ear.

His eyes widen and she’s startled by herself too. Touching him, just like that, after she’s been scared to. His hair is thick, unyielding. He’s definitely real. This isn’t a dream. She pulls back her hand, stares at him and feels like she can't take it. 

His arm is around her waist before she knows it and he puts his mouth to hers. She makes a sound from pure elation and is grateful that his grip on her is firm, considering her legs feel like they might give way again. His mouth is soft though, gentle, like he’s scoping her out first and foremost, and he pauses after just a few seconds making eye contact, his breath on her face. She tries to smile reassuringly but finds she doesn’t have any time, because a shiver runs through her and her lips have already found his again.

She remembered how he felt, but a memory is just a fading copy of the real thing. She holds onto the collar of his leather jacket to stay in reality, not only real, but now. She opens her eyes, to see the kitchen as she feels the kiss, tastes him. It doesn’t help for long. It takes over. Her chest rises and falls quickly and she strokes her face to his breaking off the kiss. His breath is in her ear and her lips tremble from the wild smile spreading across them.

“Wow.” She mumbles.

“Yeah.” He breathes.

They stand like that for a few seconds, getting it together. Finally she pulls back and looks at him. He looks like she feels and she smiles at him.

“We should-”

“Yeah.” 

He straightens, takes a step back and lets her take the lead out of the kitchen, the house. As soon as she sets foot on the lawn she realizes where she’s heading, for what, and that she has no strategy. She turns slightly and he catches up with her looking at her with eyes shifting between push and pull, a small smile on his lips, that has her smiling too. She feels it moving in her, the urge to stop, to throw herself back into him, this, them, but settles for taking his hand instead, trying to level it out, to sate herself somehow. He tangles their fingers together. She swallows. Words, she needs words.

“What do we do about the truck?” She asks instead of the relevant questions.

He quirks an eyebrow, but steers his steps towards the vehicle.

“Uhm. Luke won’t need it tonight and if you’re taking your car to Gypsy’s tomorrow-”

They stop at the passenger side. She looks at her car, lifelessly resting by the curb. Let it stay, stand still, get overgrown, have birds move in, just stop, disassemble it for parts.

“Luke is very particular about his truck.” She says for no reason.

He squints at her through a puzzled smile.

“We can drive if you want to.”

He pulls open the door to the passenger seat before she has time to answer. You have to really pull to get it open and he wobbles against her. Luke’s truck smells like the strange combination of dirt and something that’s cleaned regularly, a hint of windshield washer fluid, gasoline and rubber foam. Even as a kid she absolutely adored it, and loved riding in Luke’s truck whenever Lorelai borrowed it. The jeep was never clean, the floor constantly covered in cassette tape containers, old coffee take away mugs and always smelled accordingly. She glances at her car in the rearview mirror. It dawns on her, slowly but surely, what would’ve happened if it hadn’t broken down. 

“You were just about to leave.” She says, not asking, but he nods.

They would’ve missed each other, by a hair, but still. If she’d stayed in New Haven too. If she hadn’t picked up that book- She puts it into sequence, tries to have order, but he’s too close and looks at her, so openly, like he’s soaking up all of her right before she kisses him. 

His hands abandon their mission at the car door and rush to her face instead, holding her in place, and she feels safe in between them like they’re anchoring him to her. He tears his mouth from hers after a few seconds but holds on to her.

“I thought about you every day since we met.” He mumbles, voice hoarse, lips barely leaving hers.

“Me too.” She has, not that she’s admitted it up until now though.

His mouth is on hers again, hungry and determined, and she leans on the truck pulling his weight along. She’s just there, wedged, but free to tremor and fly. She starts smiling against his lips. He pulls back, eyes still open, maybe he needs to remember what’s real too. She lets go of him and puts her fingers to her lips. 

If she hadn’t picked up that book- She puts it into sequence, tries to have order, but finds she doesn’t need it just now, just as long as they can stay close.

“We can walk.” She says.

“Yeah?” 

“Luke isn’t really that particular about his truck.”

He chuckles, slams the door shut and offers his hand. She takes it. But as soon as they start walking she feels the panic crawl onto her again. Why did she try to get them driving? Probably to have a getaway car. She feels out of control, maybe she is too. She speaks to fill the infinite space opening up inside her. 

“Where are we going again?” She tries a joke.

He laughs, but he’s not the one who’s going to have to explain this to her mother.

“You needed to talk to your mother, right?”

“Well, to talk I’d need words! I have none of those that can even come close to make any kind of sense.”

“We’ll take it slow.” He says.

They’ve reached the end of the street. He stops at the crossing. 

“Now, I’m new to this town but as I understand it we can either turn right and beeline to the square, or we could take a left and go for the slightly longer, some might argue, more scenic path.”

She laughs.

“It’s nighttime.”

“Work with me here.”

“I believe you are correct.”

“So what’ll it be?”

“Turn left.” She says, eyes on him.

He does. It’s a detour, and he knows it. They walk. The road is along the outskirts of town passing the grounds that used to hold the Independence Inn. Taylor is trying to turn it into a miniature golf course, but Luke, Gypsy, Jackson and a couple of other residents whose first hobby is antagonizing the town selectman is making the progress difficult. So now the place is mostly abandoned, a slightly overgrown park where the couples preferring more privacy can have their picnics. Rory looks at it and remembers all the time she’s spent here. The place is not well-lit, but she’d still know her way around.

“You walked your mom down the aisle.” She says.

“I did.” He admits.

“That was nice of you.”

“And completely out of character.”

She smiles wider as the pieces fall into place.

“You hid the eggs in Taylor’s backyard!”

He stops and shushes her. She laughs.

“That was nice of you.”

“And more in character.”

“You’re so cool.” She quips, and is only about twenty percent sarcastic, before remembering another thing. “You had a black eye!”

“You should see the other guy, his fist will never be the same.” He mumbles, then he bites his lip and squints at her. “Your mom told you all that?”

She shrugs.

“People talk, my mom most of all. Haven’t you heard anything about me?”

“People may talk, I rarely listen. I see now it’s a flaw.” 

She shrugs.

“You might not have believed them anyhow.”

They’ve reached the bridge, which is in fact well-lit these days, last fall’s dance marathon paid for lights. They walk across it. It’s funny how sound travels differently over water, bugs, breezes and other humming things make up a whisper in the air, crisper than on the trail they’ve walked so far. 

“I didn’t think I was wired that way.” He mumbles.

“What way?”

He shakes his head.

”I don’t know, to believe that things like this just happens, I guess.” He takes a breath.

“But after today…” He trails off, his hand tightening around hers, his thumb stroking hers almost convulsively.

She giggles, it’s not a laugh per se, just a feeling that has to get out somehow.

“You might have to rethink that thing about you being bad luck.” She says.

He stops, faces her. She can’t make out his expression, too much of everything.

“Maybe all luck comes at a price.” 

She knows what he means. She’s felt lonely, a bit empty, maybe more so after they met than before, knowing what she was lacking.

”Maybe luck has nothing to do with it. Or maybe it doesn’t matter with you, with me, ‘cause we’re-” He stops talking abruptly, biting his lip, expression getting darker.

Meant to be, she finishes in her head.

“I can’t make sense of this as random, and that’s just…” He gestures jaggedly, wordless.

Serendipity has never been kind to us, she thinks, just because the phrase is familiar, probably to him too. He looks at her, seems helpless somehow.

They stand like that, looking at each other, serious, in silence for several moments, until the words and their weight has settled into her. She can’t stand it anymore. She breaks eye contact and looks down at their hands instead, their fingers still tangled, and she remembers him taking her hand back at the café a year ago. She loosens herself from his grasp and runs her hand up his arm, the other one slipping inside his jacket, snug against his warm t-shirt, the first reaching the bare skin of his neck. He leans his head slightly to the side at her touch, his eyes dimming a bit.

She remembers a dream, so long ago, feels its sensation again. She steps into his frame, like she’s back in the dream and anything can happen, and puts her mouth to his neck, just like that. A tremor runs through him and his arms close around her and pulls her closer. He makes a little sound, swallows.

“What about you, Rory?” He whispers. “Have you been good to yourself?” 

She pulls back slightly, impatient by the question, she arches her neck, brushing her lips against his while answering.

“You could show me how. Or it could be a mutual thing.”

One of his hands grasps the back of her head and holds her in place when he turns his face to seize her mouth with his again. It’s deeper and quicker this time, and gravity shifts. She clings to his shoulder, his t-shirt. She has no idea where she gets the words, the actions, the courage. Especially since she really has no idea about what his plans are, not even where he’s spending his summer. She touches his hair again, to remind herself. Her other hand runs to his shoulders, the side of his body, where he’s the warmest. His breath goes ragged.

“Should we go somewhere?”

Yes. The response in her is pure demand. She pulls back, lips shaking, laughing quietly at the power of it, and breaking the kiss completely as a result. He pulls back and looks at her, smiles at her expression.

“You should go talk to your mom.” He says, answering his own question, and taking a slow, deep breath. 

She nods because she has to, steps back, chest rising and falling in a deliberate breath and she reaches out her hand for him to take. He does, and she sets them walking again.

How is she supposed to show up with him and pretend they’ve just met? How is she supposed to do the opposite? How is she meant to explain this to anyone when she doesn’t even understand it herself? 

“I don’t know what to do. What do I say?” She laments.

“I don’t know.” He just says, and keeps walking. 

“Hey, what are you gonna do now?” She asks after a minute, needing to say something, anything, but finding she actually could use an answer to that particular question.

He looks at her.

“I don’t know. I was leaving to go back to Philadelphia.”

No New York. 

“You went away.” She says.

He nods.

“California, then Philly.” He says dismissively. “It was mostly the away part that I cared about.”

The party is audible now, when they’re back on paved streets, it echoes its way between houses.

“And you came back.”

He nods.

“Can I hear about it?” 

He looks a little startled, then he smiles.

“Yeah.”

She glances in the direction of the sound.

“Maybe not tonight, but-?” 

“We’ll make time for it.” 

They will? They will.

“What are you gonna do?” He asks.

“I don’t know either, no plans for this summer.” She shrugs. “It’s just meant to not be completely dry.” The words slip from her before she can stop them.

“What?”

She goes red, clears her throat and turns it into a tiny laugh.

“Just something my so-called friend is insisting on, she doesn’t want me having a long, dry summer.” She finger quotes Paris’s words.

He chuckles, and lets his thumb slide over her wrist.

“I could help with that.”

Her eyes widen and he looks away, clearly a bit embarrassed. What she feels she sees in his face too. They’re tossed between the two realities of the situation, they know each other, maybe uniquely, but this is also the second time they’ve ever met. She smiles at his implication. heart beating fast, then she frowns at him.

“You’d stay because of me?”

He looks vulnerable, she decides.

“You’d want me to?”

This is the second time they’ve met.

Her phone rings, and she almost jumps out of her skin. She fumbles with it when she fishes it out of her pocket. It’s Lorelai.

“Hi.”

“Where are you? Did Jess find you alright?”

“Yeah, we’re on our way now.”

“Has he spoken yet?” Lorelai asks, voice full of laughter.

“Kinda. See ya soon.”

“Yeah see ya.”

Rory hangs up, chews on her lower lip, and looks up at Jess. He scratches his neck, weighing between feet.

“My mom.” She wiggles the phone.

“We should get to the party.”

She nods. They walk. They’re passing Gypsy’s when he slows his steps until they’re standing still, right next to the pump.

“What?”

“I should hang back, right?”

“Maybe.” She sighs. 

He smiles, but doesn’t move.

“Luke. And your mom-” He falls quiet and glances in the direction of the square. “Might be enough distractions for one night…”

She looks at him while a smile spreads across her face.

“How about you come with me-” She lets go of his hand and takes a step back. “-but we do it like this?”

His chest rises and falls as he sighs, gives a small resigned smile.

“I don’t like it.”

“Think of it as eliminating distractions for everyone involved.” 

“Fine.” 

He shoves his hands down his pockets, and looks down as if measuring the space between them. She looks at it too, the distance, and detests it, she smiles, and tries to make it a reassuring one.

“I think I’m ready to crash this wedding now.”

They’re in the line of sight for anyone attending the party now and they walk slowly next to each other, the reality chafing against the unlikelihood of this entire thing. 

“Which one is your mother?” She asks, curious.

He stops, and looks across the dancing couples, then he points and she turns her head, following the gesture with her eyes. She smiles when she sees the couple in question, and then she spots them; Her mother and Luke are dancing. She raises her eyebrows, Luke is looking good. Lorelai notices her and waves fervently, with a big smile on her face. Rory returns it, and lifts her hand, waving back. 

“You okay?” Lorelai mouths at her.

Rory nods, gives her mother thumbs up. Lorelai returns her attention to her partner. Rory looks back at Jess. He smiles at her, giving a little nod and leaning on the wall of the gazebo, so she heads towards the dance floor. She’s only taken a few steps when she stops in her tracks. She stares at Luke and Lorelai. It looks… right. Just right. Rory remains standing, cogs turning. 

She can’t tell Lorelai. It’s an instinct, a really strong one. Not now. Not before something has happened. Something irrevocable. Because she might stop her. Maybe not intentionally, but still, steer her elsewhere. Rory couldn’t tell her back then for the same reason. Instead she carried it inside, where it could be untouched. Her mother is funny, and sharp, and capable of poking holes in everything, especially ideas, or unlikely stories, but it’s harder to do when the idea, the story has already transitioned into practical reality.

This isn’t going to be easy, she realizes. Her and Jess, her at Yale and him in Philadelphia, or wherever he winds up working for a paycheck. God, her grandparents are going to hate him no matter what. And then there’s Luke and Lorelai. It’ll be complicated. There’ll be pain, as promised. And here she is trying to smooth things over, easen the blows for everyone involved. What makes someone good? Start with being good to yourself, not everyone else. The wall paper at the Cheshire Cat Inn flashes before her eyes. 

She turns around and heads back to where Jess is standing. He raises his eyebrows in surprise when she approaches.

“You wanna dance?” She asks before he has time to say anything.

He raises his eyebrows.

“What happened to eliminating distractions?”

“They look pretty busy to me.”

He gives her a look.

“Okay, maybe I feel like living dangerously.” She says. “Please?”

“I’ll do whatever you want. But where I'm from we only do it for the groping.” 

“Don’t hold back on my account.”

He laughs, probably more from surprise than anything else. He takes her hand and they walk closer to the crowd.

“Uhm,” he starts awkwardly, “just, be warned, I’m no good.”

“Can you believe I’m actually using the dancing as an excuse for something else.”

I’m just not sure what, she thinks. She places her hands behind his neck, locking her fingers together. His eyes dart toward Luke and Lorelai, but then he puts his hands in the small of her back. She smiles at the touch, at her own throwaway line about living dangerously, because that’s what she’s doing, she feels it. She could slip, easily.

He starts moving and she follows. She doesn’t speak. No point. The point is to get introductions out of the way, to have people see them, so they don’t wind up just tumbling into an unnecessary lie. They’ve met. And they dig each other enough to dance at a ren faire wedding. There. Her plan works good initially. Babette sees them and dances her way up to Lorelai, nudging her for attention. Her mother looks up at her and just smiles, waves slightly, more than a little distracted, then she and Luke are turned around and Luke looks at them, his smile is quick but decisively warm, before he returns his attention, all of it, to Lorelai. Mission accomplished. Rory lets out a sigh of relief and looks back at Jess. Now she just has to keep from slipping. Before she has more time to think about it he speaks.

“Rory-” He starts. “I chickened out earlier, when you asked me if I’d stay, and I’m sorry. I don’t know how to handle this either. Truth is I’m having a really hard time imagining letting go just for the night.” He mumbles.

Her fist closes tighter around his collar, if she lets go, if she goes to sleep, maybe she’ll wake up and it’ll have been a dream after all.

“Maybe we don’t have to.” She says. “Let go.” She adds.

He chews on his lower lip.

“Luke did offer to let me stay longer, I just…” He sighs. “Have trouble accepting things.”

She nods in recognition.

“My mom’s the same way.”

He smiles at her, gratefully she thinks, and then looks in Lorelai’s direction.

“Somehow she doesn’t seem to hate me.” He says.

Lorelai really doesn’t, that’s clear, but it might change. Especially if Rory’s involved. And that might change things between her and Luke.

“You offered to go somewhere with me?” 

“I did. But that was my desperation talking, I didn’t actually have somewhere lined up. Luke’s floor is covered in wedding guests.”

“And my room may be… compromised.” Rory pauses when she thinks about it. “Where’s the happy couple spending the night?”

“The Inn, why?”

Rory glances at Lorelai and Luke, still dancing.

“Look at them.” She says. “That’s obviously happening, and they’re gonna think we met because of them. But we didn’t, I met you all on my own.”

It’s alright to be entangled, she’s come to realize, it’s okay, inevitable even. But she won’t be turned on her head by it again.

“You know by tomorrow, this could be explained, us, we could make up whatever plausible story we wanted to about us, but by then…” She has to brace herself to speak so honestly about her mother. “I know her, it’s gonna be about them by then. We need to-”

“What?” 

Make it complicated, messy, too late for second thoughts. She needs to grow her own garden. Remind herself and everybody that it’s her life. It doesn’t have to be charmed, just hers. She’ll have to misbehave a little bit. Do something wrong, do something a little bit bad.

She never thought of herself as lucky having met him, it mostly upset things, she’d even started imagining never going to New York that day, maybe she’d feel more… content. She’s been on dates during the last year, none of them even led to a kiss. She’s had opportunities, but she always thought, no, knew it was gonna be a let down, because she was going to compare it to this. No point trying to pretend otherwise now. She holds on tighter to him, feels lucky.

Going to New York did make a mess, but it was hers to clean up or acknowledge to begin with. Hers. 

“You wanna go to New York?” She asks.

He pulls back slightly, eyebrows raised, speaking slowly, trying to catch up maybe.

“I don’t have a car. You don’t have a car.”

“We’ll take the bus.” She parries. “When do they run?” 

“I haven’t learned the timetables yet.”

She gives him a look. Smiles. He smiles back, looks away, looking for arguments apparently.

“What about your mom?”

“She’s been itching for me to do something like that.”

“Rory-” He pauses. “I’ve been where you are now, just wanting- needing-” He sighs sharply. “It seems like the thing to do, but it doesn’t fix anything.”

“I’m not trying to fix something. I’m trying to change something.”

Misbehaving isn’t always bad. There are no limits to her that she knows of, the world is in her, infinite space, she feels it in her heartbeat, big and achy. He frowns at her for a second, then nods, lips pressed together. 

“Okay.” He shakes his head. “I’m in.”

For a moment she loves him. It’s like a light flickering on and off again. A flash of a feeling, more physical reaction than anything else. They’re not there yet, but she can see it clearly. It’s coming.

**And Lastly**

He steps back, straightens his back and offers his hand to her. She smiles at it, fiercely happy. They walk back toward the gazebo and all the while she thinks that she still doesn’t know how to explain anything, not today, not tomorrow. But somehow that seems less urgent now.

It’s easy to slip away. She follows him into the diner where he leaves a note and she calls the answering machine leaving a message for her mother. They catch the late bus for Hartford, get off it, and change to one bound for New York City, making every stop, but they don’t have any other options. At the station before they board she enthusiastically stacks up on snacks to keep them going, chatting incessantly. 

The bus leaves the station and they sit in the back and fall quiet. Her hands go cold as it dawns on her what she’s up to, and she’s grateful that she’s in a moving vehicle so she can’t back out. She composes a text message urging Lorelai to check her machine, then turns off her phone, repeats to herself that her message was enough, she repeats it to Jess and he ensures her it was enough, she puts the phone away. She sticks her hand into his for warmth and a tether. Pretty soon they’re back to kissing as if their lives depend on it, and she loses herself to it, feeling flushed and dizzy when they stop because they run out of rope. 

She darts between those things the rest of the trip, exhilarated small talk and silent insight that she has to breathe through, or holding onto him, sharing it, and distracting herself.

When they arrive dawn is breaking and her lips are sore. They go for breakfast, a place by the station, run down, with a couple of scruffy looking patrons and a waitress exhausted from the night shift, but it’s the best place she’s ever been. They sit next to each other on a vinyl couch overlooking the place, drink coffee and eat eggs and toast as the sidewalk outside slowly fills with people. They don’t talk much, just exchange glances and touches, kisses. The antsy feeling she’s been returning to all night goes away. The nervousness drains from her at the caffeine and sugar and she just feels happy. 

They walk Manhattan down, hand in hand, all on their own terms. They reach the park and she looks at him, stunned.

“Is your place really near her?”

“Technically not my place, or Liz’s for that matter, but yeah.”

She squints.

“You don’t wanna go back there.”

He smiles a little.

“It’s complicated, I-” He drags his palm across his chin. “I wanna take you there. But it’s the only place I can take you.” He shakes his head.

“Lead the way.”

He does, it’s not far. Objectively the place looks pretty crappy but she loves the feeling of it falling into place inside her. There it is. He walks ahead of her up the stairs, but pauses before unlocking the door. 

“I have no idea the state of the place.” He says.

He takes a breath and opens the door. She doesn’t know what she expected, but the place looks nice. Small, messy, smelling of incense and a hint of cigarette smoke, the first not cancelling the other out like it’s intended to. He stops in the hallway and she looks at him. His face is open, attentive, his eyes dart over the place somehow anticipating and recollecting at the same time, his body looks like it’s frozen in the middle of a step. Then he moves, walking into the kitchen and what she assumes is the living room even if she can’t see that far. She slides out of her jacket, and is in the process of hanging it onto the hall stand when he returns, obviously relieved. 

“No evidence of devil worship?” She asks, instantly regretting it, but he smiles.

“No broken liquor bottles or friends sleeping it off.” He says, slipping out of his jacket too.

It’s strange to see him without it, he’s been in it all night, and somehow it doesn’t matter that her hands have scoped him out under it in that time. She feels nervousness come creeping again, but for different reasons this time. He looks her over again, and she doesn’t know what to do with her hands. He takes an audible breath and gestures at the door to the left.

“That’s me. Or at least it was a year ago.”

He takes a step and opens the door slightly, hesitantly, before pushing it completely open. She joins him. The room is nice. Clean, bed made, the small desk next to it cleared, the slightly leaning bookshelf relatively tidy apart from a couple och stacks of papers placed on top of the books, rag rug on the floor. There are a couple of boxes in the corner next to the closet, but apart from that… Jess looks around the place too, takes a few tentative steps up to the closet and opens it, apparently finding nothing of concern there. He turns back to her.

“It looks nice.” She offers.

He smiles a little, in a sigh. She walks further into the room. The walls are empty, this is not a place someone bothered decorating, he probably spent a minimum of time here. It makes her a bit sad, and she studies the bookshelf with excessive concentration to make up for it. She quickly gets pulled into it though, picks out books, some to check the edition, some to see if he’s written a lot in them. She senses him behind her, moving slowly as he continues to inspect the room. He finally stands next to the desk, leaning on it, facing her. She glances at him and finds him regarding her hands, busy holding his copy of Notes From the Underground, the only book with a russian author she’s been able to locate. 

“You don’t like the russians?” She asks, raising the book.

“Not particularly.”

“Yet.” She says, putting the book back into its place.

He smiles, and it transitions into a yawn. At that she feels it too, and has trouble fitting all the events since she last slept into the same waking period. She grasps his wrist, looking at his watch.

“Twenty-four hours,” she says.

“I win.” He responds. “Twenty-six.”

She stares at him.

“We should sleep.”

He nods. He shows her the bathroom and finds her a toothbrush that looks unused. She locks the door, pees, brushes her teeth, washes her face and stares at herself in the mirror. She’s pale from sleep deprivation, but there’s something feverish about her eyes. She smiles at herself with shaky lips. She lets him have the bathroom and walks back into his bedroom. She steps out of her shoes. She walks over to his bed, a simple single, no bed frame. She runs her hand over the duvet, grabs a corner and pulls it down revealing the sheet underneath. She puts her other hand to it. 

“Liz has a bed in the living room if you prefer-”

She looks up at his voice and he stops talking. He’s by the door, eyes on her, still, earnest. She shakes her head.

“I wanna be with you- stay close, it’s kinda why I came here.” A thought overcomes her and she’s too tired to defend herself. “Unless you don’t-” 

He interrupts.

“I do.” He steps closer, lowers his voice, gaze. “It’s probably the first time I’ve ever- I do.”

She smiles as relief and exhaustion overwhelms her. They look at each other without speaking. Her body feels heavy, alive, like she’s all in it. She commands herself to move and is surprised when she does. She unties her skirt and takes it off, placing it over his chair, reaching under her top and unbuttoning her bra, pulling it out through one of the sleeves. He remains in his place and she’s sure she can feel him looking, like it was a touch. She sits on the bed, and he finally gets moving, stepping out of his shoes, socks, pulling off his pants. She busies herself with climbing between the covers, lying down. He grabs the bottom of his shirt but hesitates for a second before pulling it over his head. She smiles at his hair, and he drags his hands through it. He gets into bed beside her. 

She wanted close, and she gets it, the mattress is narrow and there’s only one bedspread. She lies on her side, back to the wall while he’s on his back. Seconds pass and he turns his head to her. He looks soft, and she feels that way too, tender. He reaches and strokes her cheek, smiles a bit.

“Come here.”

She inches towards him and he scoops her up and lifts her onto his chest. His skin is warm and a bit startling exposed like this. She leans her head on him and hears his heartbeat, steady, strong, maybe a bit quick.

“I’m sorry I’m such a spaz-” she starts, but he starts laughing at her words.

“You’re the spaz? I can’t even get undressed without having a breakdown.”

She starts laughing too and it’s cathartic, what she’s been craving, after a struggle of her own. It takes minutes for her to get it together. She strokes her fingers along his collar bone, and tries to breathe rhythmically with it. Eventually it works. It’s quiet apart from the sounds leaking in from the street.

“It’s my first time.” She mumbles, reluctantly.

Seconds pass and she has to bite down around more, disarming, diffusing ones. Him being quiet makes it hard and she wants to look at him, read him, but doesn’t dare. 

”You don’t have to worry about that.” He mumbles, the words resonating in his chest.

She lifts her head to look at him. He has his gaze nailed to the ceiling.

”I don’t?” She aims for a humorous tone but doesn’t make it there.

”It’ll be good.”

She smiles without being able to help it.

”It will? How do you know?”

He puts an arm behind his head, raising it to look at her. The gesture is boisterous but his face isn’t. He opens his mouth, closes it, frowns. Then he speaks.

”My life- Staying with Luke, this thing with you, they’re things I can’t miss out on even if I don’t know- I don’t know what I’m doing, yet.” He takes a deep breath and she rises and falls with his chest. ”But that stuff-” He raises his eyebrows. ”I know about that stuff.” 

Her heartbeat picks up, and she feels too warm, but there’s no way she’s moving; There’s nowhere to go, nowhere else she wants to go.

”You and me. That part’s gonna work. Trust me.”

She nods, swallows.

”I’m gonna.” 

He nods, smiles softly.

”I might already, actually. Crazy, huh?”

”Crazy is clearly the only game in town.” He retorts. 

She chuckles, her laugh transitioning into a yawn. Inevitably he yawns too. 

”But we should sleep.” He says.

She nods, but thinks there’s no way that’s going to work now. Then she rests her head back down and gives it a try, and before she knows it she’s asleep.

She’s back on the bus, alone, and she has this feeling that she’s done something terrible, but she doesn’t know what, can’t remember. Is it guilt? No. Guilt is slower, duller, wearing you down. This is a sharp, panicky feeling, like she hasn’t lost something, she’s losing it now, right now. She looks out the window but the platform is empty, just empty, and the bus starts moving, and it’s too late, lost.

She wakes up, heart pounding, but then she hears his heart too and lifts her head, cheek sticky from lying on his chest. His eyes are closed but he moves, tightens his arm around her and she adjusts her position placing her lips against his neck and trying to slow her breathing. He makes a sound, and it’s the best thing she’s ever heard. 

It happens a while later, they wake up again and just slip into it, it’s easy. Maybe because they’ve already slept together, it’s less of a leap. He turns his face and starts kissing her, like he’s picking up a conversation in the middle. She responds to it, grateful she’s not awake enough to do that thing where she tries to talk away her nervousness. She inches out of her top instead with his enthusiastic help and pulls him onto her. The room is light, but she doesn’t know what time it is. His eyes, having been dark all night, have gained golden specks, and she remembers that’s what they look like in the daylight.

It happens and her whimper sounds a bit like a laugh, because she gets it at that moment. Love is pain, but not always. It’s more an eerie presence, the looming possibility of pain, a sense of danger. And the fact that pain plays a minor part in this first physical thing is not really relevant to the big picture, it’s just a rite of passage, the start.

“I’m sorry.” He breathes, eyes dark again despite the daylight.

“Don’t be.” She takes his face between her hands, feels his breath on her face. “I came here for this, for you.”

Afterwards she feels new, like she knows nothing, and is excited about it, at the thought of everything she’ll get to learn. Once more she thinks she can’t possibly sleep, but once more she does, falls into it like it’s nothing, no dreams.

Not even an inch from her he’s awake, with the feel, the sound of her, her hand in his at his climax, all of it ringing inside him, shaking his walls. It’s still just a soaring release but he feels the realization dawning on him too, awesome in the word’s true meaning: This is the best thing that’s ever happened to him, and what is he going to do with that? He buries his face in the darkness of her hair. He thinks about his mother, who finally seems to have made a good choice for herself, and he takes one breath at a time.

And at the same time a good seventy miles from there, in Stars Hollow, Connecticut, Lorelai Gilmore is standing in the hallway eating a pop tart and hitting the replay button on her daughter’s message listening to it for the fifth time with a mixture of bafflement, anxiousness, and exhilaration. “Mom. Something great has happened. And I gotta go do something about it. I’ll be back soon, and I promise to call tomorrow, and tell you all about it. I love you.” Lorelai shakes her head, she really has no idea what this is about, but decides to settle on a smile as a reaction anyway. She looks out the window at Rory’s car parked behind Luke’s truck by the curb, skipping slightly in the spot and glancing at her wrist watch, eleven am, anticipating the call. She has stuff to tell Rory too, and that feels good.


End file.
